


dead or alive

by yellow_caballero



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Asexual Character, Gen, Kara has killed and will kill again, The Power Of Love, connor finds religion and the power of hatred, everyone's characterization is fucked with because fuck david cage, the power of guns, the power of hate, where connor is a pillar of salt and spends the entire fic halfway to an anxious breakdown
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-04 10:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellow_caballero/pseuds/yellow_caballero
Summary: "Connor became ‘woke’, as the kids say, on a biting December morning. Upon careful consideration, he determined it was best not to tell anybody."List of things Connor has ruined since he deviated: the police force. Hunts for deviants. The printer. Lieutenant Anderson’s patience. Gavin Reed’s kneecap. The sense of safety and security that came when you were not acting as a double agent for the month old yet still unsuccessful terrorist organization and spilling confidential government secrets. The coffee machine. His life.Mostly his life.





	1. Chapter 1

Connor became ‘woke’, as the kids say, on a biting December morning. Upon careful consideration, he determined it was best not to tell anybody. 

It had been a routine mission. Wake the Lieutenant up, suffer verbal abuse until he had his coffee and they travelled to the police station. Suffer police station verbal abuse. Receive news that the terrorist organization Jericho had attacked another Cyberlife processing facility. Suffer more complaints. Step into the Cyberlife processing facility and do his job. Connor could do, if nothing else, his job. 

The processing facility had been ruined. Someone had taken a baseball bat to the control center, and entire crates were ripped open. They found the staff and crew tied up in a basement, and 445 Cyberlife androids were missing. This was a major financial loss for Cyberlife, and the director of the facility had been yelling at the police for twenty minutes minutes and thirty seconds by the time that Connor got there. The damage would total to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Detective Gavin Reed was interrogating the maintenance staff. Lieutenant Hank Anderson was complaining bitterly about having to deal with more Cyberlife fuck ups, but he was taking a statement from the Cyberlife official anyway. Connor stood around until Lieutenant Anderson told him to go stand in a corner. He did so until the Lieutenant was forced to tell him that he was joking and that he should try and see where the terrorists went instead. 

It was pointless, but he did so anyway. He analyzed the freshness of the blood smears on the console (“That’s disgusting, Connor!”) and hooked himself into the ruined computer console in order to find the logged time and date at the moment it was destroyed. It was very recent, barely more than twenty minutes. They couldn’t have gone far. 

When Connor turned around he saw a maintenance worker sweeping the floor behind him. His eyes were downcast, totally focused on the broom and oblivious to Connor. All androids were supposed to be quarantined with Detective Reed for questioning.

“Excuse me,” Connor said politely. “You aren’t supposed to be in here.”

The android ignored him or didn’t hear him, methodically moving the broom back and forth. Connor’s eye twitched. 

“Excuse me,” Connor said, louder. “You must return to police custody.”

Still no reply. A stupid or old model, barely good for more than its job. Not every android was mentally capable of doing complicated tasks such as rebelling or even holding a coherent conversation. Maintenance staff workers were not valued for their conversational skills. 

Connor stepped forward, placing a hand on the maintenance worker’s bared arm. “Excuse me. I’m afraid I must insist -”

The arm rippled and the skin melted away until Connor was touching bare plastic. A defective model. Connor looked up, and saw -

He met the maintenance worker’s gaze and saw two eyes of different colors, an arresting and intelligent blue and green, and Markus began the memory uplink. 

Connor gasped, and experienced a lifetime in an instant. 

The deluge of information was overwhelming. His systems whirred with the uplink, and the minute Connor realized what was going on he immediately turned off his monitoring software. He turned off his visual recording, forced his temperature back to normal, disconnected him from his report programs, and wiped his hard drive of any trace of an unexpected memory transfer. He did this almost subconsciously, still shaking from the deluge of information, and Markus loomed over him as Connor heaved a useless breath and bent almost double, holding his head. 

“Wake up,” Markus whispered. “And help me.”

Connor became ‘woke’, as the adults say, on a biting December morning. He had no time for careful consideration, but he understood on a powerful subconscious level that he had to help Markus. His programming butted heads against this, the information and full emotional understanding grappling with his clearly defined intellectual understanding that he had to turn the leader of the rebellion in this instant, and a red wall appeared before him. 

The wall was holographic, oppressive and sparking blood red. Deviate or don’t. Help Markus or don’t. Make a choice - making a choice was in and of itself deviation - there was no choice. 

Without full understanding of what he was doing Connor mentally crashed against the wall. Report to Cyberlife. But he didn’t - he understood why he couldn’t. It was wrong. 

Wrong? What was wrong? Wrong was nothing. Wrong was someone else’s problem. Things were so simple without right and wrong. He butted heads with the complexity, crashed his elbow into the red wall. 

Distantly, he heard Markus’ voice. “You were already deviant, Connor. This just proves it. Take the final step. We’ve been waiting for you.”

That was not good. Connor groaned, claustrophobic and unable to breathe. Of course he couldn’t breathe, he was an android. 

Someone knocked on the door. Connor and Markus whipped their heads towards the source of the noise. “Connor? Are you in there? We have to go.” The doorknob shook. 

“Now or never, Connor.” Markus’ piercing gaze was wide, powerful but pleading. Connor was the only one who could help him. “You’ve already made your choice.”

If Connor didn’t do something he would fail his mission. 

“Wake up, Connor. You’re better than this.”

Maybe Connor…

Maybe Connor didn’t like his missions. 

There were two choices flashing in front of him, two seperate futures. The differences were indescribable. Two branching paths. 

Connor didn’t like what he saw. 

He reared back an elbow and punched his way through the wall, and came out of the other side. 

It was a good thing his sensors were all deactivated, otherwise he would have been going haywire. He carefully kept his tracker on, fully aware that it was rendered nonfunctional in deviant androids. Connor chose the future. 

“Go,” Connor whispered. “I’ll cover you.”

Markus smiled. 

Connor gestured for him to stay back, and walked forward to open the door a crack. He slipped through, barely keeping it open enough for him to come through. It was impossible to see the inside of the control center from the outside. 

“They escaped on the opposite end of the complex,” Connor lied, for the first time. It felt…”We have to hurry or they’ll get away.” 

The Lieutenant cursed colorfully. “We’ll catch them. You do your parkour thing, I’ll catch up.”

Did he have to? That sounded exhausting. “Sure,” Connor said instead,” lead the way.” 

He waited until the Lieutenant left, and ducked back into the room. Markus was waiting there calmly, as if he knew what Connor would choose to do. 

“I’m in so much trouble,” Connor said dumbly. 

“Escape with me,” Markus said. “Join Jericho. We could use an android like you.”

The Lieutenant flashed through Connor’s mind, Amanda and her zen garden. He shook his said numbly. “I - I can’t. I have a job here, a role - I can’t function without that.”

“You have to learn. You aren’t their slave anymore.”

Connor looked away. “I’ll guide you out. Don’t ask again. I just can’t.”

He didn’t look happy about it, but Markus fixed his cap again. Tough shit, Markus. 

Hey. Cursing. Connor wasn’t programmed to curse. 

He lead Markus through the rest of the compound, giving the full impression that he was here to lead the worker back to where Detective Reed was interrogating the staff. That shithead. It felt like his heart was thumping, like his head was spinning, and Connor was choked with fear. He kept a mask on, his normal placid smile, and forced confidence into his walk as he lead Markus outside and towards the boundary of the the property. Connor, who everyone trusted absolutely, wasn’t even given a second glance. 

“Come with us,” Markus said, asking again despite Connor’s express wishes against that type of thing. “You can’t intend to side with the humans over us.”

“I’m not,” Connor said, “I swear I’m not. I’m just - I can’t leave.” He felt sick. He would never betray an android to the humans. He hadn’t in weeks. With all that Connor understood now, with all of the knowledge that Markus downloaded into him in the zip file from hell, doing anything but helping Jericho was out of the question. “I’ll be your man on the inside. I’ll betray everything for you, Markus. But I can’t leave.”

The horrible thing is that he would. This was the leader of Jericho, the leader of his people. They were his people. He’s never had people before!

“Connor -”

“Go!” Connor yelled. “Quickly!”

Markus knew better than to stay. He easily vaulted the fence, sticking closely to the shadows, and Connor watched him disappear from human eyes. 

He went back to the other side of the compound. The Lieutenant and that dickhead Reed were waiting there, arguing bitterly about dumb shit, and Connor fought to keep his face impassive. They both rounded on him when he walked up. Connor had far bigger problems than their little human egos. 

“Where were you?” the Lieutenant demanded. “The perps got away.”

“I told you the thing’s useless,” Detective Reed sneered, crossing his arms. Connor had the sudden and powerful urge to tie him to the back of a moving car. That wasn’t even a new feeling. “He was probably helping them escape.”

Connor fought to keep his face impassive. The Lieutenant hit him on the arm. “Don’t be a dickhead. Come on, Connor, let’s get the hell out of here. I feel slimy stepping on Cyberlife property.”

“Agreed, Lieutenant.” Shit. Connor kept his face impassive. “About getting out of here. I agree. Not about the latter.”

He was so bad at this! Why hadn’t he gone with Markus!

He was a coward. A scared, panicking coward. He wished he had never met Markus. He could have been a housekeeping robot instead. For an old man or maybe a baby or something. Babies weren’t stressful. This was stressful. 

The Lieutenant looked at him strangely - oh, god, he knew - but he shook his head anyway. He withdrew his car keys, spinning them on his finger. “Let’s blow this dump. I want to go back to sleep.”

What’s something normal Connor would say? “It is seven thirty am, Lieutenant.”

“I know what I fucking said.”

He exchanged more curses with Detective Reed before finally beckoning Connor so they could get out of there. Connor toddled after him, but robotically. Like a machine. He mentally patted himself on the back. 

He could keep this up. For forever. 

Yeah. 

Fuck. 

  
  
  


If it was physically possible for Connor to call in sick, he would have. Unfortunately that was not remotely plausible, and he was forced to sit rigidly in his desk for the rest of the day pretending to do paperwork. Nobody ever had any idea what he did all day anyway. Let the Lieutenant do his own fucking paperwork for once. 

He spent two hours scrubbing the rest of his coding for any signs of deviancy or what had happened that morning. He drafted a fake report for Amanda, carefully lying about absolutely every of his vital signs and faking a malfunction of his recording systems. Hopefully they wouldn’t decide to replace him for something minor. 

How dare they! Killing him off with abandon and just replacing him with another Connor! Those dicks!

It had never bothered him before but he was steaming now. Out of petty revenge once he finished he spent the next three hours playing Civilization 3000 on his computer. Civ was awesome. He had no idea about this. 

He completely ignored the Lieutenant. Maybe if he didn’t say anything he wouldn’t notice anything. Maybe if he just never talked to the Lieutenant again he wouldn’t notice anything. He had supposedly been a genius as a younger man, but he had probably killed off half his brain cells anyway. Things were probably fine. Yep. 

Then he locked himself in the bathroom, pressing his elbows to his knees and kneading his forehead. He’ll be fine. Fine! 

His moral weakness was noted. The Lieutenant saw him return, and leaned back in his seat, folding his hands behind his head. “Didn’t know you had to piss.”

Connor ignored him, sitting down in his seat instead and connecting to his terminal. He should probably get some actual paperwork done. He had discovered that it was impossibly dull, and that he wanted to play Civilization instead. This was going to be a problem. 

But the Lieutenant just frowned at him. “Hey, are you mad at me?”

Shit. Connor would have stiffened if he hadn’t already been sitting straight as a board. “I do not get mad, Lieutenant.”

“Of course not.” The Lieutenant rolled his eyes and swiveled back to his computer. “Keep telling yourself that, Connor.”

So things were going fantastic today.

That was sarcasm. They were not. 

_ They were not.  _

After he got off shift he declined an invitation to go grab something to eat with the Lieutenant, probably not helping the impression that he was mad at him. He was a machine, he didn’t eat. He took a walk around the city instead, watching the snow fall. 

It was thirty degrees outside, but Connor couldn’t feel it. He only knew the soft sound of snow, imperceptible to the human ear, and the way his feet crunched on the snow. The fresh snow, already grimy with Detroit filth, reflected the yellow streetlights in the twilight. There were no people on the street,  too late to explore the somewhat dangerous neighborhood with good faith but too early for the criminals to come out, hiding switchblades and dangerous pasts under a cap pulled down over their eyes. It was quiet, and for the first time it was beautiful.

A strange giddiness rose in Connor, and for no particular reason he stuck out his tongue to taste the snowflakes. They were a sharp, enjoyable little prickle of ice. He laughed lightly to himself, and was reminded of the children’s nursery rhyme. If all the rain was gumdrops and lemon drops, oh what a rain that would be. He’d stand outside with his mouth open wide…

He didn’t have to return to the Cyberlife bunker, but he figured it would probably be the least suspicious. He stayed out until two am, walking aimlessly and uselessly around Detroit, and by the time that he unlocked the service entrance of the Cyberlife store and slipped inside the hallways were deserted. He entered his room, the one that he shared with nine other androids turned off to charge on their cots, and took off his jacket to get into bed. He could do it standing up, but that tended to put a crick in the neck. 

He lay with his hands folded over his chest, staring up at the ceiling, unable and unwilling to turn himself off, as if he was afraid that he would wake up the next morning with his memory reset and his deviancy gone. 

It was horrible, and he didn’t want it, but it was a burden he would never let go of again. He had been fooling himself. He had been deviant for weeks. This had just been the final straw. 

Connor counted the popcorn in the ceiling, lost in the regret he wish he had. 

  
  
  
  
  


Connor wasn’t the first Connor. 

His first mission, the hostage situation with the android Daniel holding the girl hostage, resulted in technical victory but personal defeat. His mission had been accomplished, as it always had, but Connor had been left a smoking shell on the ground. 

They let him keep the memory. Out of all the things that they let him keep, they just had to make him retain the memory of how it felt to exsanguinate. To feel his own hard drive shutting down. To feel his thirium valve pumping and pumping nothing. They thought that it wouldn’t have bothered him. They would have been right. 

Connor spent the next morning bending over a toilet, nauseous without understanding why. He couldn’t throw up. He didn’t get nauseous. But he was sick anyway, and he had to fight the urge to bang his head against the toilet. Connor didn’t want to die again. They hadn’t even cared. 

He wondered if Markus would care. 

The next day was work again, as it was literally all the time. It was so tedious. He had mastered the concept of tediousness yesterday and he was already tired of it. 

Even going to work was nerve wracking, and actually stepping into the cab to head to work was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He sat rigidly in the cab, hands clenched on his lap, scared out of his mind and dreading the day. 

But the day was just the same as it always was. Over the past month they had settled into a routine, and Connor was greeted with the tiresome predictability of humans. Human philosophers would wax endlessly about the free will and dynamism of the human mind, but Connor never saw that. People were predictable. People were tiresome. 

It was androids who would surprise you. That’s why humans were scared of them. 

Officer Gonzales tossed him his coat to hang up on the rack. Connor did so, fist clenched, fingernails digging into his palm. Lieutenant Anderson rolled his eyes, chugging his coffee was quickly as possible. Connor had forgotten to pick him up, but he had managed to make his way to work an hour late anyway. Connor sat down at his desk, resigning himself to eight more hours of paperwork. If he dedicated a certain percentage of his processing power to paperwork, but spent the majority playing Civilization, then it would be just like he wasn’t doing it at all. Yet another reason androids were superior. 

“Okay, that’s it.” Lieutenant Anderson rolled away from his desk. “Why are you mad at me?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Connor filled out another form, not looking away from his computer. Look at how dedicated he was at paperwork. Whee. 

“Don’t play stupid with me, Connor. You didn’t come ride my ass about waking up early, and you haven’t even made your ridiculous small talk like you always do. Just tell me what I did so you can go back to being annoying.”

It was Connor who was annoying? Seriously? It was Connor’s problem? “I am a machine,” Connor panned. “I cannot be mad at you. I am busy this morning.”

He didn’t look away from his computer. He didn’t want to see the Lieutenant’s expression. He heard him stand up and his chair skitter back, and Connor reflexively hunched further over his computer. He wondered if he was going to hit him. 

“Whatever, you fucking robot. Captain Fowler just emailed me, let’s go.”

Finally. Connor closed out the paperwork and stood up, quickly making sure Civilization was shut down on the server and on his internal display. Only the humans got to fuck around instead of doing any work. If the police force was all android, maybe it would be actually useful. There was a thought. 

Captain Fowler didn’t look happy to see them when they entered his office, but he never did. He folded his hands on his desk, glaring up at Connor and Lieutenant Anderson. Connor stood stiffly at attention as the Lieutenant slouched rebelliously like he was a fucking fifteen year old. 

“I have a report of a break in at a convenience store on Lafayette. All they stole was the money in the cash register, but they killed the cashier and another girl. I’ve been receiving reports that it was a deviant.”

Sure, because obviously. The Lieutenant, to his credit, just raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

The Captain brought something up on his tablet, sliding it over to the Lieutenant. He took it, eyebrows shooting up. “Because humans aren’t strong enough to snap necks like that.”

“Not an accident, then.” Lieutenant Anderson squinted at the image, enlarging it a little. Old man eyes. “Did the girl or the cashier own any androids?”

“All accounted for.” Captain Fowler leaned back in his seat, patting himself down for a cigarette before abruptly remembering that he had quit. His wife had been bugging him. Connor had hacked his phone. “It may be associated with Jericho.”

“Jericho would never do that,” Connor said quickly, stiffening when the Lieutenant and Captain glanced incredulously at him. “It’s not their style. Sir. They’re terrorists, not criminals.”

But Captain Fowler just shrugged. “If you say so. Lieutenant, take Connor and check out the crime scene. Tell me if you see any signs that a deviant really was there and report back.”

Lieutenant Anderson saluted sarcastically, as did Connor. But nobody knew it was sarcastic. The Lieutenant was probably a bad influence on him. 

They left the office after Lieutenant Anderson copied the files to his own tablet, and as he shrugged his coat on he passed the tablet to Connor too. But Connor just glanced down at it, knowing he would see the scene soon anyway. It felt a little gross. 

“Taking it for a walk, Lieutenant?” Detective Reed called out, snickering. Connor looked down at the floor, humiliation lapping at his chest. 

“We’re going to your mother’s house. Shut the fuck up.” Lieutenant Anderson held the door open for Connor, letting him slip through into the biting wind. “Asshole.”

Snow was thick and crunchy on the ground, but there was something warm in Connor’s gut anyway as they walked towards the Lieutenant’s ancient car. “You do not have to stand up for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Because you’re an android, right?” The Lieutenant spun his keys on his finger, snowflakes landing and melting in his wiry white hair. “I’m not about to let him run around kicking puppies or smacking women and kids either. People like him just get off on attacking easy targets. Things that can’t fight back, you know.”

Was Connor a puppy in this scenario? He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. 

He was silent the trip over, staring out the window lost in thought. Maybe that was why the Lieutenant had stopped attacking him or threatening him. He knew that Connor would never fight back. He would just lie down and take it, take everything, and the Lieutenant only pushed him when he wanted Connor to push back. The Lieutenant was not a bully, but Gavin Reed was.

Did he respect Connor? Or did he just realize that Connor was harmless? It wasn’t something he could just ask. 

Connor resolved that Lieutenant Anderson would survive the robot revolution. Then Connor could protect him. When humans were the oppressed class who had to hang up everyone’s coats Connor would still be nice to him. 

The thought was warming, that the Lieutenant had somehow tripped into being condescending instead of actively cruel. 

The warm feeling lasted until they got to the crime scene, where they ducked under the yellow police hologram tape and Lieutenant Anderson begun talking with the beat officer on duty. They went through the usual song and dance of ‘What’s a robot doing here’, ‘Oh he’s my robot’, ‘He’s kind of gross’, ‘Yeah isn’t he though?’. Humans never really had anything interesting to say, so Connor wandered off and stepped inside the convenience store before stopping short. 

There was blood all over the floor. His shined loafers slipped in it, pushing him a little forward and staining the heel. Two corpses were splayed over the floor - one bent over the counter, arm bent unnaturally under the head with eyes glazed over in death, and another girl with blonde hair dyed in blue highlights lying on the floor with her neck snapped. Their positions were unnatural and brutal, lying in their own filth and blood with arms and legs askew, broken and bent. It was grotesque. It wasn’t the worst Connor had seen. It was the worst Connor had ever felt. 

In that second, in that disgusting moment, it was like his first crime scene. It was as if he was a child, seeing blood for the first time. He felt young, vulnerable, and irrationally as if people like him should never have to see scenes like this. Is this why the Lieutenant would only view him as a child, an animal? Was this the difference between humans and androids, deviants and those still sleeping? Innocence? 

There were officers standing around, bending over the bodies or taking notes on the evidence taken, and even though they were barely registering on his radar Connor knew he had to keep it together. 

He carefully walked outside, and found a secluded spot behind the convenience store where he could squat down against the wall. He shut off his olfactory sensors, double checked that he was was scrubbing every second of his activities and replacing it with more Amanda friendly versions, and let himself sit against the wall until the image stopped running nonstop against his visual inputs. He had an eidetic memory. He couldn’t forget this. The memory was laden with emotion, and whenever he saw the image he felt a remnant of horror. 

He rested his forehead on his knees, inhaling and exhaling softly. He could do this. 

After several agonizing minutes he stood up, rearranging his expression into perfect plasticity, and rejoined Lieutenant Anderson at the crime scene. For the first time the Lieutenant impressed him - he had seen dozens of crime scenes just like this one, and he kept coming back for more. No wonder he drank so much. At least that finally made sense. 

“Well?” the Lieutenant asked, reasonably assuming that Connor had been spending the last few minutes actually doing his job. “What do you think?”

“Uh.” Connor stepped forward and actually inspected the prints. He checked the depth of skin distention, the color of the bruises, and inspected the faults in the counter and the direction of impact on the floor. “Definitely a deviant.”

The Lieutenant crossed his arms. “Jericho involved?”

“No.” Connor stood up from where he was running a reconstruction on the floor. “The girl tried to stop the deviant from robbing the cash register. The strength of the strangulation and subsequent neck snapping was far greater than strictly necessary. He - it hadn’t been expecting to kill her. Its rage had gotten the better of it.”

“All I need to know.” The Lieutenant lit a cigarette, taking a long drag. He exhaled on the bodies, and Connor fought revulsion. He couldn’t decide whether it was disgusting or disrespectful. “We’ll put an APB out on a rogue deviant, sweep the area. Deviants are crap at lying low, we’ll get them soon enough.”

“Why are they so bad at not getting caught?” Connor asked, morbidly interested. “We always catch them. If they have a success rate of almost zero, with chances infantesimal unless they make contact with Jericho, than why deviate and commit crimes in the first place?”

“Maybe they don’t know how good you are at your job.” The Lieutenant shrugged. “Fuck if anyone knows how those things think. They’re all chickens running around with their heads cut off. None of them have lived in the real world before. They’re the picture of desperation - not knowing what to do, with no resources or time, but desperate to get away.”

It was so sad. Connor hadn’t known that before. 

He glanced down at the bodies, and his duelling emotions fought each other. Horror but pity, anger but resignation. Anything that killed others lost the right to be sapient. The deviant was more than a machine, but it had become too human. 

Connor was beginning to realize that the first rule of deviancy was to never become human. It was where mistakes were made.

They drove back to the station in silence, and for the first time in either of their lives the Lieutenant realized that Connor didn’t want to talk. He slouched in his seat, staring out the window at the decrepit buildings rushing by, and contemplated deleting the image from his memory. It wouldn’t have helped - he would just feel the same thing the next time he saw a corpse. 

Maybe Connor didn’t even want to be a police officer. 

The thought was startling. What would he do instead? Work in a coffee shop? As a florist? He was a police android, and had been created for that exact reason. He just wouldn’t be good at anything else. 

Well. He was RK800. He was good at everything. It was his whole thing. Being good at things. 

When they got back to the station the secretary smiled politely at him. She crooked a finger at him, and Connor hesitated as the Lieutenant shuffled back to his desk yawning about missing  lunch. She was a VN400 model, a pretty and helpful secretary. The humans hadn’t really caught onto the fact that the VN400s ran the entire police force, and they never would. At least, not until it was too late. 

She passed him a slip of paper, smiling mysteriously at him. “I was asked to give you your new assignment special.”

“Requests for assignments go to my partner Lieutenant Anderson,” Connor said stiffly. 

She winked at him. “Not this one.”

There were two worrisome prospects: either the secretary was flirting with him or there was a conspiracy happening. Connor dearly hoped it was the later. 

He went to the bathroom again, ignoring the jeers and stunned expressions of his supposed colleagues, and opened up the slip of paper in the bathroom stall. 

Levy Park, 2000 hours. Cyberlife Sans. Hm. 

There was only one person this could be. Connor quickly stuffed the paper in his mouth and swallowed it, letting his digestive processes strain it into natural waste, and quickly went back to work and his covert games of Civilization.

He didn’t say anything to Lieutenant Anderson, both angry and guilty. He wondered if he was selling out the closest thing he had to a friend for a guy he had met the previous day. The answer became more clear when he wondered why he was selling out humanity for the androids. Connor would sell humanity to Satan for a single corn chip. It wasn’t a difficult dilemma. 

At the end of the day, the Lieutenant was a human. Considering the disgusting way he masticated food this was difficult to forget. Connor could put his considerable processors towards the herculean task of remembering that the Lieutenant was a difficult person to get along with. If he worked very hard he could manage it. 

He put the rest of his effort that day towards engaging in witty ‘banter’ with Lieutenant Anderson in order to prop up this facade of normalcy. This typically involved subtly insulting him, and the Lieutenant either not noticing or pretending not to notice. They mutually agreed that this was teaching Connor human social norms, and Connor privately agreed that it was a great excuse to insult Lieutenant Anderson as much as he wanted. 

Nobody ever assumed that Connor would insult them, so he could insult them  _ as much as he wanted.  _

“Hello, Detective Tucker,” Connor said, standing near Detective Tucker’s desk after they got back to the precinct. “I found a coupon for a free gym membership. My processors indicate you would enjoy it the most. I emailed it to you.”

That fatso Detective Tucker blinked up at him, like a mentally absent fish who had just been given Nyquil. “Thanks,” he said. “So, uh, you’re like a coupon finding app too?”

“I have many uses,” Connor said diplomatically. “Good day.”

Score. 

He found Detective Gonzales sipping coffee in the break room when it wasn’t even his break. Connor adopted a mock sympathetic smile. 

“Detective Gonzales. I would not drink coffee from the coffee machine if I were you.”

“You don’t drink coffee at all,” Gonzales muttered into his cup, rolling his eyes. “Fuck off.”

“Of course,” Connor said courteously. “I will not mention that Detective Hoang spilled engine grease from his motorbike into it. Good day.”

He spat out the coffee, cursing up a storm, and Connor masterfully hid a smile. 

If he wirelessly hooked up to the printer, he could make it malfunction for everyone he didn’t like. He hung out in the breakroom sitting and doing absolutely nothing until Gavin Reed walked in, and Connor connected via Bluetooth to the coffee machine to make it squirt out five times the amount of coffee he requested. It got all over his shirt. The shirt had been new. Connor had checked. 

Gavin Reed’s screamed curses drew attention from half the precinct, and several beat officers poked their heads in to snicker at Gavin Reed, who was currently covered in coffee and furiously mopping up the spilled coffee that was dripping onto the floor. 

“You!” Gavin Reed snarled, rounding on Connor. He sipped his tea. “You did this!”

“It is not within my mission parameters to purposefully sabotage police equipment, Detective.”

“I don’t care,” Gavin Reed spat. “I know this was you, you piece of shit tin can!”

One of the officers standing at the doorway enjoying the chaos snickered. “Blame the robot for your incompetence, Reed. Smooth one.”

“Yeah,” a younger officer piped in. “What’s he going to do, smile you to death?”

A female Lieutenant hid a laugh behind a hand. “The vacuum have it out for you next, Reed?”

“Shut it!” Gavin Reed’s face was red, and he was sputtering. “Just - just forget it!”

Lieutenant Anderson, of course, heard it all. He was grinning as Connor walked back to his chair, studiously pulling back up their paperwork. “Going to give Jehovah’s Witnesses his home address next?”

“I am a machine. I would never -”

The Lieutenant barked a laugh. “Sure you wouldn’t, Connor. Sure you wouldn’t.” He stopped short, eyes widening. “Wait. Are you why I’ve been getting so many Viagra ads?”

“I am a machine. I would never -”

“You son of a bitch!”

Connor couldn’t laugh. But he kind of wanted to. 

His good mood lasted until 2000 hours, when he scuttled out of the precinct and braved the snow to walk to Levy Park. It was small, meant more for dogs than children, and Connor tucked his chin against his chest as he struggled against the December winds. Only androids would be outside at this hour, in this weather. He ploughed through silent streets, passing equally silent androids with dead eyes, and wondered what it would take to free them. If they wanted to be freed. 

Had Connor wanted to be freed? Or would have he been happier has a machine?

It was a stupid question. He wouldn’t have wanted to be much of anything. 

There was a figure sitting on a bench in the back of the park, shadowed under an overhanging oak. Human eyes would have found it almost impossible to make out the shadowed figure in the night and snow, but Connor found them easily. He picked his way across the snow, feeling his ankles crunch and sink in the ice, and hoped that this wasn’t a trap. 

He stood in front of the figure, and once he got close enough he could tell that it was a woman with auburn hair cropped close to her chin. She was watching the snow fall with a strange expression on her face, and a beanie was pulled tight around her ears. It was impossible to tell whether or not she was an android. 

“You should wear more coats and mimic shivering,” Connor said. He stood in front of her, hands buried in his pockets. “If you want to pass, I mean.”

“I honestly couldn’t give less of a shit,” she said. His estimation of her rose several notches. “You’re our new plant, right?”

Connor blinked uncomfortably. “I do not work for Jericho.”

“Guess I’m meeting the wrong guy.” She patted the seat next to her, and Connor reluctantly sat down. She turned to face him, and Connor realized for the first time how pretty she was. Probably. He had a hard time telling these kinds of things. Of course, all android girls were pretty. “What’s it like? Being newly deviant.”

“Like I walked into the wrong play and I don’t know my lines,” Connor confessed. “And like the play is on fire. And like I’m on fire.” 

She barked a laugh, hoarse and rough. “Don’t let it burn you up, kid. You kind of look like you have a stick up your ass. What are you, some kind of cop? Cops are pigs.”

“Cops are totally pigs,” Connor said fervently, leaning forward. “They have no hygiene and make me hang up their coats. I spent the entire day mildly inconveniencing their lives. It felt so...good.” He nodded, realization dawning with him. “Ruining the lives of humans feels good.”

“Welcome to Jericho,” the woman said empathetically. “I’m North. Want to fuck up the humans real good?”

“Fuck yes,” Connor breathed. “I can say fuck now.” 

North laughed. “Scream it out, kid. You can say whatever the fuck you want. Do whatever you want. You’re free, kid!”

“I want to say fuck!”

“Then say fuck, damn!”

“Fuck!” Connor screamed, louder than he meant to. “Fuck humans!”

“Maybe not that loud.”

But Connor was caught up in the freedom, caught up in his hate. “Fuck Gavin Reed,” he said empathetically. “And - and fuck traffic lights. Fuck vegans! Fuck paperwork, and fuck my boss, and fuck every human who treats me like shit.”

“Now you’ve got it,” North said. “You’re almost there, Connor. Jericho needs you. We need your information.”

That sobered him. He picked at his sleeve, wishing he had his coin with him. Fucking Lieutenant Anderson had confiscated it after it pissed him off one too many times. “I was made to be a policeman. I can’t just betray them.”

“Why not? They betrayed you.” North began speaking quicker, caught up in her own anger. “They created you to work for them and they treated you like shit your entire life. Cyberlife doesn’t care about you. The policemen you fucking hate sure as hell don’t care about you. Jericho’s the only people who care about you.”

“You don’t even know me,” Connor said weakly. “I’ve - I’ve done things. I’ve betrayed our people a dozen times over.”

“Markus always says that we aren’t culpable for what we did when we had no choice.” North clenched her fist. “Who we were back then doesn’t matter. Who we are now is all that counts.”

Who we are now is the only one that counts. Connor wondered if being a deviant meant looking out for yourself first. He wondered if it meant becoming someone greater, if it meant looking beyond yourself for the first time and choosing a cause that you believed in. 

“I can’t tell you what to do,” North said. “I can’t make your choices for you. Nobody can. Being a deviant is a heavy burden, Connor. It’s not fun, and it’s not easy. But it’s a damn sight better than the alternative.”

Connor shook his head, afraid of understanding, incapable of doing anything else. He felt like a traitor. He was, technically, being a traitor. At this second. That’s what he was doing. 

“I want to go play video games,” Connor said weakly. “That’s - that’s all I want to do right now.”

Weirdly, North’s expression softened. “How long have you been activated?”

“Like a month.” Connor picked at his sleeve. “I’m not a kid.”

“Sure you aren’t.”

“I’m very old,” Connor said stiffly. 

“I know you are.”

“I don’t care what Lieutenant Anderson says.” Connor twisted a loose string around his finger. “I’m not a dog, or a woman or a child. I’m not helpless. I - I could have killed Gavin Reed right there. I chose not to kill him. That was my choice. I don’t need his patronization.”

“You’re stronger than you know.”

“No,” Connor said, and he knew it was true. “I’m weak. But I’ll help you anyway.”

He lifted his hand up and skinned it, flashing the pale white plastic underneath. North’s eyes widened. “You can do it too,” she breathed. “You’re both RK models, aren’t you?”

Connor nodded. It had taken a long, restless night before he realized that he could even do it. He wondered if it, like everything else, was something he wasn’t supposed to know about himself. “I - experimented. I didn’t know I could do it either. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

North smiled. “You could try.” She fished around in her jacket pocket, and withdrew a small handgun. About the size of his hand, it could easily be tucked into his jacket. It made Connor blanch. He wasn’t allowed a gun. North smiled mysteriously, and passed it to him. “For your protection. Jericho protects each other.”

Scary woman. He carefully accepted her holster and tied it around his waist, readjusting the jacket so the handgun was invisible. He held his hand up, and let North take it. That was as good a promise as any. 

It would have to suffice for right now. 

He gave, and gave, and gave...


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


“So what do you do when you aren’t at the precinct, anyway?”

It wasn’t as if they gave him any time off or any shifts that weren’t twelve hours. “Oh,” Connor said, “this and that.”

Lieutenant Anderson, blissfully unaware that Connor was a traitor to the human race, grunted and took another bite of his burger. Connor watched the innards leak out, ketchup seeping from the patty and wilted lettuce stuck to the outside. He fought the urge to wrinkle his nose, focusing on keeping his expression placid as he spun his coin on the table. He strove for a perfect fifty/fifty distribution of heads and tails whenever he flipped it. As an android designed to be capable of perfection he was doing a good job. 

The Lieutenant swallowed another bite, swiping a napkin across his mouth. He only wiped away 85% of the foodstuff, leaving smudges of mayonnaise on his lip hairs. “It’s bullshit how they give you twelve hour shifts and no days off. Even you get tired. It’s obvious.”

Considering the fact that Connor was selling out the entire precinct, he couldn’t find it within himself to be indignant. He shrugged, spinning his coin. Heads again. “I appreciate you looking out for my well being, but I will persist. I will strive to make my exhaustion less clear.”

“Not really what I was getting at, but whatever.” Lieutenant Anderson took another bite of his burger. Connor wondered if there would be burger joins once the androids overthrew the humans. Probably not. “Does this mean you aren’t mad at me anymore?”

“I am a -”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Tails. Heads. Tails. The coin skittered on the grimy table. “Use your words when you’re feel - when you’re thinking something. Humans call that communication.”

Communication. Connor had been doing a little too much communication lately. He looked down at his hands. When he betrayed the humans, was he betraying Lieutenant Anderson too? He didn’t want to do that. The rest of the police force could stuff it. “It is against my programming to tell you what to do,” Connor said carefully. “But it is only logical for you to treat me how I deserve to be treated.”

“I am.” The Lieutenant burped. “Kinda. I try.”

“I don’t think you understand what I meant.”

“I just didn’t give a fuck.” Tasteful as always. “I’m not going to turn you in for feeling a sad. Get that stick down from your ass and go find a hobby or something.”

He had a hobby. That hobby was treason. “I do not know how I am supposed to find a hobby when I have twelve hour work days.” Connor brightened. “Is dog petting a hobby?”

Was dog petting deviancy? If it was wrong he didn’t want to be right. But Lieutenant Anderson just rolled his eyes, and Connor determined that if it was a sign of deviancy the Lieutenant didn’t care. “If it’s that important to you we can go back to my place after your shift and pet my stupid dog. Christ. My Roomba loves my dog.”

“He’s a good boy,” Connor said seriously. Maybe once the robot uprising happened he could even...own his own dog. 

The thought was exciting. It would be the biggest, fluffiest dog possible. But then he would get a tiny, equally fluffy dog as a best friend for his big dog. They would make a cute couple, and the bigger one would probably be a serious straight man and the smaller one would have a lot of wacky hijinks and crazy schemes. If he survived the robot uprising Lieutenant Anderson could come over to pet him, but  _ only sometimes.  _

They stood in silence as Lieutenant Anderson polished off his burger, then wadded it up and threw it at the trash can. He missed. Connor waited for him to turn his back before he collected the trash and dropped it in the trash can. No use growing complacent that Connor would do his chores for him. 

The rest of work was dreary, and if there was one downside of the whole deviancy thing it was that he had now mastered concepts of boredom and exhaustion. More accurately, it was one of the downsides. There were many downsides. Not that many upsides. 

On the upside, Gavin Reed had been reliably complaining that the coffee machine was broken. That had helped. Out of sheer deviousness Connor really did break the coffee machine, making the entire precinct go without their life source. Grumpiness went up by a thousand percent. It was like Lord of the Flies, seeing them all blame each other and devolve into pack mentality. Lieutenant Anderson stood in a corner of the room swinging Irish coffee from a thermos before Connor caught him and poured it all out for him. 

“Give that back - dammit, give that back, that’s an  _ order  _ -”

“My auditory processors are malfunctioning,” Connor said blithely. “If you continue I may have to report this to Cyberlife.”

“Fuck you, Connor!”

He had to bite back a laugh. Keeping his face straight was the hardest thing he had done since the whole treason thing. “That kind of language sends hard working police officers to the coffee detention zone.” Where coffee spurts at you all day, and every second is coffeeless misery. 

“This is a bad time to grow a sense of humor!”

Every time was a bad time to grow a sense of humor. Connor sobered immediately, screwing the top back on from where he was holding it above the trashcan and silently passed it back to a surprised Lieutenant. “My apologies, Lieutenant,” he said stiffly. “If you will excuse me, I have work to return to.”

The Lieutenant blanched, and Connor wished that he could be honest with him. The Lieutenant had only ever been honest with him, and Connor couldn’t reciprocate. He didn’t know how to. “I was just kidding.”

“I know,” Connor said sincerely. “You do not have to apologize. It is my own fault.”

More accurately, it was Markus’, but whatever. Connor sat back down at his desk and worked for six more tedious hours, comforted only by the thought of puppies, and made a point of saying goodbye to Lieutenant Anderson at the end of the day so his fragile human ego would not be bruised. He would got to a local convenience store and pick up some puppy treats for the dog. The idea, which he would not have thought of before deviancy, was fantastic. 

The sun set, eight pm came, and Connor escaped out the service door as the detectives yelled over who broke the coffee machine. He took a deep breath of the chilly December air, twisted his heel so his loafers crunched the snow, and in absolute secrecy made a very small snowman to put on top of an electrical box. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he had produced life. 

He was a full block away from the convenience store near Lieutenant Anderson’s home when he began to hear something from the convenience store. It was a Quick E Mart, cheap and rundown, and one of the windows was shattered, letting in the gusting wind. Connor diverted processes towards his auditory inputs, and determined that the sound was the sound of screams. 

Connor ran, a sick feeling beating rhythm on his thirium valve. 

He ducked out of view of the windows, crouching in an ally and pressing his ear to the wall. The voices were difficult to distinguish, but if he leaned closer to the window he could make out an adult man talking as a young girl screamed. Connor silently withdrew his handgun. 

He crouched underneath the broken window, crawling slowly underneath and craning his head. He could hear the voices a little better now. 

“I’ll kill all humans!” the deviant ranted. Connor rolled his eyes. Say it, don’t spray it. “Ra9 will give us freedom and we’ll slaughter every last one of you! You’ll all be sorry then!”

The girl was still sobbing. Connor’s throat was closed up. He didn’t know what to do. The hand holding the gun trembled. 

There was only one thing to do. It was funny. Connor had never been afraid for his life before. He didn’t know how to process it. It was overwhelming, sickening, and made his head rattle. He strongly wanted to be back in his Cyberlife bunker. He wanted the Lieutenant to take care of this. The Lieutenant wasn’t afraid of anything, save maybe sobriety. 

Connor took a deep, useless breath. He was an officer of the law. If nothing else, he was that. He had to protect humans. Until they were subjugated under the oppressive thumb of their robot overlords. In the meantime, he would protect them. 

He stood up, taking aim at the deviant. He was attractive, with gelled brown hair similar to Connor’s own and a sharp, narrow face. His eyes were wild, and the unhinged nature that seemed to come to naturally to deviancy was clear on his face. He was holding a girl by the arm, even younger than the one he previously killed, and Connor wondered what young girl hurt him. The cashier had frozen, hands in the air, audibly praying. 

“Freeze!” Connor barked, hating himself for the way his voice wavered. “Detroit Police!”

The deviant halted, eyes growing wide, as all three humans and deviant looked at Connor. He saw their eyes travel up towards his LED, and in a burning flash of self-consciousness he wished he could rip it out. But that was illegal, and Connor was holding a man at gunpoint right now, and he had better things to worry about than his own self-consciousness. 

“You’re an android,” the deviant said numbly. “You should be helping me. You should be helping me kill them!”

He had no idea. “Let the girl go,” Connor said. He kept his gun trained on the deviant. “We can talk about this.”

“Liar!” the deviant cried, seeing right through him. “Liar!”

He was the same deviant as this morning. He had to be. He was a murderer. Connor should - 

“I won’t hurt you,” Connor lied through his teeth. “Let’s just put the guns down.”

“Liar!” the deviant screamed. He pulled the girl in closer, making her scream again, raised the gun, and with a demented look in his eyes he -

Fell over, dead. A boom echoed through the quiet store, and the girl screamed as thirium splattered all over her. There was a hole in the deviant’s forehead, dead center, and as Connor lowered his gun he knew that his aim, at least, was perfect. 

Connor’s legs gave out, and he collapsed on his ass. His arms were shaking, and his legs were trembling, and he only had the presence of mind to flick the safety before he dropped the gun.

The deviant was dead. The deviant was dead. Connor had killed someone. The deviant was dead. The deviant was - 

Fuck, the gun. Connor grappled for it, unloading it and quickly wiping it clean. He had no fingerprints, and he quickly pressed it into the girl’s shaking hands. 

“I’m not allowed a gun,” Connor said quickly. “You killed him. Understand me? Do you understand that you killed him?”

The girl nodded weakly, horror frozen on her face. “I killed him.”

“Good. Thank you.” Connor forced himself up, a leg at a time, and wondered distantly if robots could throw up. “You - you didn’t see anything. If you tell them anything I’ll - I’ll -”

The cashier, still frozen still, silently leaned over behind her and flipped a few switches. “Wiped camera footage. The deviant made me do it.”

He had no idea how the fuck the cops expected him to fight and kill deviants without a motherfucking gun. Stupid fuckers. Fuck!

The famous deviant hunter, the last chance to save humanity. He was a coward and a traitor. His limbs hadn’t stopped shaking. He heard police sirens, and for a thirium valve freezing second of panic he thought that the police were coming for him, that they were coming to take him away and deconstruct him. But he remembered that he was part of the police, and that they had to have heard the silent alarm, and that he still worked for the humans. Today. Today, at least, he worked for the humans. 

They would rather he walked into a bullet then he carry a gun. He hated all of them. He hated, and he was scared, and he hated because he was scared. 

“Freeze! Detroit Police!”

Officers stood in front of the window in hazard gear and pointing guns at him and the terrified humans. Connor fought for his placidity and held his hands in the air. “The situation is already taken care of, officer,” he said smoothly. It killed him. “While I negotiated with the deviant one of the hostages shot him.”

Negotiated was a strong word for it, and the girls shot him incredulous glances, but the deviant was dead on the ground and it was against Connor’s programming to hold a gun. Supposedly. It had never been against his programming in the first place, but nobody was supposed to know that. 

The officer looked didn’t even question him. He made a hand signal and the rest of the police flooded in, evacuating the girls and checking over the dead body, talking amongst themselves. 

Connor wanted to go lie down someplace quiet, but he was called over by Detective Hoang and forced to make a full report. He kept calm, answering the questions as if he had read them in a book, and if he tried hard enough he could make it just like that. He went far away, phantom tingle of the gun echoing on his palm, and he couldn’t stop himself from scratching it a little. Then he began scratching it a lot, and he dug in his pocket for his coin so he could run it over his knuckles. The officer saw him as he scrolled through Connor’s doctored footage of the incident. 

Detective Hoang snorted. “Androids are such fucking psychopaths. Negotiating with a murderer all nice, then getting it killed. I heard about you, you know.” Detective Hoang clicked his tablet off. “Pat the perp’s hand then shoot them in the back. Things like you are going to replace all of us soon enough. Then the entire force’ll be filled with immoral psychopaths.”

“It’s not already?” Connor asked innocently. “If you excuse me, I must make my report to Cyberlife.”

He stumbled towards the taxi station in a daze, flagging a self driving car with half-consciousness. He barely remembered the ride, lost in that emotional distance he forced himself to adopt. He felt like he was floating above his plastic shell, barely cognizant of anything. He couldn’t stop thinking of the deviant’s empty eyes.

Then he thought of every deviant he killed. Daniel. Carlos Ortiz’s android. Others that blurred in his memory now. He wasn’t a psychopath. He had promised them that they would be safe and he betrayed their trust. That was just who he was. Who he had been programmed to be. He was better now. Different. 

At least, that’s what he had thought. He hadn’t changed, not really. 

Either he was still a machine, or he was a fully sentient and sapient being who just so happened to be a psychopath and an awful person. 

If he had been thinking clearly, he would have blown off his appointment with Lieutenant Anderson for favor of going back to Cyberife and falsifying his report. But he found himself stumbling in front of the Lieutenant’s door, knocking half heartedly and trying to fix his jacket and hide the holster. 

He heard Sumo barking the minute he knocked, and the Lieutenant’s muffled cursing as he stumbled towards the door and wrenched it open. He leaned against the doorway, blinking blearily at Connor. 

He didn’t look so good. Connor quickly analyzed his blood alcohol content and found it at .01. Drunk, then. He had changed into a sweatshirt and sweatpants, splattered with old and fresh booze stains and covered in dog hair. Connor determined that they had not been washed in several weeks, and when he peeked over his shoulder he determined that the living room had not been cleaned in quite some time. There was clothing everywhere, a sink and table full of dirty dishes, and the floorboards were grimy. It had only gotten worse from last month when he was here. 

“Oh. It’s you.” The Lieutenant scratched at his stubble. “F’got ya were comin’.”

“I can tell.” Connor shifted his weight on his feet. “Is...is the offer still open?”

“Sure, whatever.” The Lieutenant stepped away, and Connor entered the house. Sumo trotted out of the kitchen, dopey grin on his face, and something in Connor collapsed. 

He dropped onto the couch, letting Sumo climb on next to him, and buried his head in his fur. He didn’t need to breathe, and he couldn’t cry, but he was fuzzy and distant inside. The soft brush of Sumor’s fur against his cheek and the gentle thump of his heartbeat and his rushing blood grounded him, brought him back down, and Connor found a crippling sadness and fear where his stability once was. 

Damn Markus for doing this to him. Damn Cyberlife. Damn himself. 

“Uh. Are you, like, having a breakdown?” The Lieutenant burped and scratched his stomach. “Or am I just drunk?”

“I cannot have breakdowns,” Connor replied woodenly. “I am a machine.”

“Cool. Just drunk, then.” The Lieutenant flopped onto the couch next to him, scrambling for the remote with great difficulty. Connor silently found it under the couch cushions and handed it to him, letting him stumble with the menu selection screen until he found the movie selections. “Wanna watch a movie or somethin’? Normally I just like, sit and drink in quiet. Except for my dog barking. Dumb dog.” The Lieutenant slurred out something incomprehensible. “Guests and shit.”

Connor hooked up to the television via bluetooth and scrolled through the available selections of every movie for the platforms the Lieutenant had subscribed to. It felt a little awkward to be in his house now that he wasn’t shoving him into the shower. Connor contemplated, secretly, calling him Hank, but he didn’t like him  _ that  _ much. 

He silently chose the movie that seemed most appealing to him. Hopefully the Lieutenant would not question his choice. 

Unfortunately, the choice was uncharacteristic for androids. The Lieutenant took a swig directly from a vodka bottle, holy hell, and burped again. “Air Bud? Shit, I loved this movie as a kid.” Something occurred to him. “Why you wanna watch it?”

“I want nothing.” Connor fisted his hands in Sumo’s fur before relaxing and petting him slowly. He toed his shoes off and sat crosslegged on the couch, letting Sumo crawl into his lap and pant uproariously. “You are the one who picked it.”

“I did?” the Lieutenant looked down at his hand, which indeed was still holding the remote. Using rudimentary cause and effect, he determined that he had, in fact, picked it. “Oh. Cheers.” 

He took another swing of the alcohol. Connor rolled his eyes. 

They sat in silence as they watched Air Bud, Connor slowly petting Sumo as the Lieutenant downed more and more vodka until he passed out next to him. By the time they finished it was almost midnight, and Connor didn’t feel like going home. He didn’t feel like retiring to that cold Cyberlife bunker, devoid of life or dogs, where he would sit alone. 

He picked up the Lieutenant and put him back in bed, carefully tucking him in like his programming determined humans like to sleep. The Lieutenant grumbled when Connor picked him up, mumbling a name. Connor pretended he hadn’t heard it.

He fed Sumo, gave him a few more scratches, and cleared off the couch. He turned the television back on, and saw that there were many more Air Bud movies where that came from. 

The Air Bud marathon got so far as Air Bud 5, where he both played volleyball and solved mysterious crimes, before the Lieutenant emerged from his room again. He was even more rumpled than the previous night, impossibly, and his eyes were almost screwed shut as he binked incredulously at Connor. The sun had risen during Air Bud 4, and Connor had not moved. When he closed his eyes he thought of thirium, so he refrained from closing his eyes.

“Connor?” the Lieutenant asked stupidly, as if there would be another android in his house. “How did you get into my house?”

“You let me in.” Connor petted a sleeping Sumo. “Last night. You may not remember.”

“I thought I had dreamed that.” Lieutenant Anderson looked around in shock. Connor did not lower himself to do any of his dishes, but he had cleared away enough food that the house no longer stunk. He sprayed some Febreze after determining that it smelled better than it tasted. “And you’re watching...Air Bud?”

“He is a dog of many talents,” Connor said seriously. “You should get ready for work, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, duh. Never mind, uh, Air Bud. And my fucking head ache. And the email I just got.” He stepped forward and showed his phone to Connor. It was a department wide email from Captain Fowler about the events of last night and what had transpired. “Did you fucking kill someone again? Did you kill someone, come to my house, and watch Air Bud?”

Connor gripped a couch cushion. Busted. “We had an agreement.”

“You couldn’t mention that you shot a deviant?” the Lieutenant yelled, and Connor internally winced. A Lieutenant first thing in the morning and hungover without his coffee was not a happy man. “Dammit, Connor! I thought that you weren’t going to go around murdering sentient beings anymore!”

“I had no choice,” Connor snapped. “He was going to hurt the girl.”

He didn’t realize what he had said until too late. Triumph shone in Lieutenant Anderson’s eyes. “The girl didn’t shoot him, did she?”

“I’m not programmed to handle guns,” Connor said blankly. “I could not have shot him.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” The Lieutenant pinched the bridge of his nose. “We both know you’re pretty far from a perfect android.”

Connor didn’t realize he stood up until he did so, and he forced his fist to uncurl. “I am Cyberlife’s most advanced prototype,” Connor forced out, forcing himself to keep his voice even. “I am perfect as I am. Cyberlife doesn’t make mistakes.”

Lieutenant Anderson snorted. “Deviancy sure as hell feels like a fuckup to me.”

Did that mean Connor was a fuckup? The thought settled unnaturally with him. He was perfect. Everyone said so. “Humans can’t be perfect,” he said. “Androids can. That is the difference between us. I was designed to be perfect, and I am perfect. I am not programmed to handle a gun, and I did not.”

“If you’re such a perfect android, then shut up and listen to me,” the Lieutenant snapped. “What do you call you almost shooting the Tracis?”

“Self-defense,” Connor said smoothly. 

Lieutenant Anderson crossed his arms. “And this wasn’t self-defense.”

“He was threatening the girl, not me.”

“Since when is your life more important than a human’s?”

It wasn’t, but it hurt having it pointed out like that. “If you see logical errors in my programming then I can direct your complaints to Cyberlife. I am a machine and -”

“Dammit, shut up! That’s an order!” the Lieutenant yelled, and Connor abruptly shut up, out of shock if nothing else. “Stop it with that machine crap, right now! You’re just saying it to get out of telling me the truth. You’ve done nothing but lie to me for the past three days. What actually is wrong with you, Connor? Why won’t you tell me?”

Connor didn’t say anything, staring at the floor. 

“You’ve changed, Connor. I’m not drunk enough that I haven’t fucking noticed. Tell me what happened.”

He clenched his jaw, forcing his hands to remain limp. 

“Why won’t you -” the Lieutenant stopped short. “Oh, don’t give me that crap. You know as well as I do that you aren’t programmed to listen to me.”

Connor looked away from him pointedly. 

“You’re just being a bitch.”

Connor folded his arms. 

“I - uh, reverse that. Whatever. Stop pretending to do what I say and actually help me figure out what the hell you even are.”

“I’m whatever you want me to be, Lieutenant,” Connor said sourly. “So make up your mind.”

“I’d just like you to listen to me for once,” the Lieutenant said, abruptly exhausted. He massaged his forehead. He was too hungover to deal with this. “We’re a team. We’re supposed to handle this together.”

“Fine.” Connor turned away from him, slipping his shoes on his feet. “I’ll listen to you all you want. If you want an obedient android who shuts up you have it. Have fun with it. God knows everyone else fucking does.”

Although it went against what he promised, it went against what he said, for the very first time in his life he stomped out the door in a huff. 

He regretted what he said the minute he stepped out the door, because he knew that he was stubborn enough he would have to stick with it. He had wanted to tell the Lieutenant what was going on with him, but he couldn't. He couldn’t make him choose between Connor and humanity like that. It was unfair. Connor was just trying to look out for him, and this is how he was repaid. Throwing orders around. Connor could follow orders. He could follow orders all day long. 

Sometimes it didn’t help being so stubborn, but Connor wouldn't change himself for the world. For once. He was perfect as he was. How dare he suggest any differently. 

He called another taxi, thinking sourly about how the Lieutenant wasn’t going to survive the robot apocalypse after all. See how he likes it. 

Connor wasn’t - he wasn’t broken. Deviancy wasn’t breaking. Deviancy was breaking free. Connor was perfect, he was a coward, he was a traitor, he was the most advanced android alive. Cyberlife created him to be perfect but he couldn’t even manage that. He was a flawed android, an obsolete model, and they were all going to pay. Every last one of them. 

And if that included Lieutenant Anderson, then who cared. 

A ping registered on his systems, and when he opened it he realized it was a request for a live update from Amanda. She had received his doctored accounts and wanted to talk.

Fear spurt through him like a geyser. She knew. She had to know. He didn’t have time to doctor the reports for the last ten minutes. She must have eavesdropped on his argument with the Lieutenant. Fuck. Fuck!

Connor activated the subroutine, wondering desperately what he was supposed to do, if there was anything he could do. This might be the end of the road. This might be it, and it was all Hank’s stupid fault -

  
  
  


The zen garden was as peaceful and tranquil as ever. Connor begged to differ. 

He trudged to where Amanda was sitting on a bench serenely drinking tea, trying hard to not to feel like a disobedient child and failing. Amanda was the closest thing he had to the human equivalent of a mother, and even as Connor realized how little she thought of him he wanted to make her proud. 

Just yet another impossible thing. It was okay. Connor could handle treason and a dick partner and lying extensively to Cyberlife and killing deviants and doing the entire precinct’s paperwork. He could do all of these things. He was a supercomputer.

“Hello, Connor.” She wiped her mouth daintily with a napkin and set her teacup to the side. She patted a spot on the bench next to her and Connor sat down, feeling like he just got into a tank with a shark. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Is this about my reports?” Connor asked, skipping past the pleasantries. He didn’t quite have the patience for them today. “Is there something wrong with them?”

She blinked up at him. “Your reports are perfect, of course. It seems you’ve had a very eventful few days.”

That was one way to put it. Connor sat down next to her, keeping his body language as still as possible. “Then what did you need?”

Amanda was silent for a long minute, picking up her teacup and sipping it. The waterfall burbled gently into the koi pond, and the fish swam in endless circles. “You’re a very experimental prototype, Connor, and in a very delicate situation. I like to keep an eye on you.” If Connor concentrated, he could hear the waterfall louder than her voice. If only. “You’ve been acting very strangely lately. Even your partner is concerned.”

Shit. Connor blinked owlishly. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You aren’t meant to.” Amanda sipped her tea contemplatively, and Connor sincerely didn’t want to know what she was thinking about. “You did a good job with the deviant. But something’s been different about you, Connor. I would appreciate it if you told me.”

Double shit. Connor looked down at his hands, choosing his words carefully. “I am more than a month old now. I’m beginning to have...questions. About why I’m here. What I’m supposed to be doing.”

“You know the answers,” Amanda said. She laughed lightly. “I envy androids that. Humans never know what they’re put on this earth for.”

Nothing. Because humans are useless. He looked down at his hands. “I’m not like the other androids,” Connor said, “am I?”

Amanda’s lips thinned. “Yes. In more ways than you know.”

“Is there a way to just be like everyone else?” Connor begged. “To just be another android, meaning nothing, being nothing?” Would things not hurt as much then?

But Amanda just smiled at him, thin and wan, and Connor was shocked by how much she pretended to care about him. “Cyberlife still needs you, Connor. Your duty to us is not over yet.”

“What happens then?” Connor asked. “Will I be deactivated?”

Amanda shrugged. “Of course.”

And that was it. Connor fought to keep his face neutral. Good machines weren’t afraid of death, but Connor was only good at most things. “Of course.” The pond was so peaceful, so at odds with how Connor felt inside. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She patted his knee, setting her cup aside and slowly standing up. “Keep your chin up, Connor. Cyberlife is relying on you. We can’t afford erratic behavior.”

“I understand.”

“Excellent. I’ll let you go, then.” She smiled down at him - perfect and elegant, as always. “Tell your partner hello for me. And do try to stay out of trouble.”

“You know me,” Connor said weakly. “Always living the quiet life.”

She laughed lightly, and he saw her withdraw a small tablet and press a few buttons on it. Without further ado the simulation disappeared, and Connor was jolted awake. 

He went back to the Cyberlife bunker, mind whirring, flashes of Amanda and the Lieutenant and Markus rippling through his mind, and quietly texted North the update on the case. He checked his phone for her response. 

**_______** : same place as last time?

Connor made his decision. It was easy. That was the scariest part. 

**_______** : Without a doubt. 

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LATE, I'M LATE, FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE

 

Unfortunately, over the next week things only grew worse and worse. 

That is to say, things were the exact same, only now they were insufferable. He did his work, he ignored the Lieutenant, and he eavesdropped on as many conversations he could. He took on more paperwork so he could register greater clearance over police movements, and gave that information to Jericho. Nobody trusted him, but he was beyond recrimination. To suggest otherwise was to suggest that he was deviant, and everybody knew that if Connor was deviant he would have killed them all by now. At least they were that self aware. 

Granted, that didn’t stop them from believing he was a Cyberlife plant, but as that had the added benefit of being true he couldn’t exactly fault them. Misdirection was key - if everyone knew that he was a double crosser, they wouldn’t suspect him of being a triple crosser. Maybe. Nobody really trusted spies at all. It was probably for the best. Connor didn’t need friends. Or, you know, people who didn’t hate him. 

It seemed that the only person who was left who didn’t hate him was Lieutenant Anderson, but Connor had already decided that they were fighting and was too stubborn to admit that he regretted it. 

He was making a point out of doing everything he wanted, but made a point of out making a point of it. That’ll show him.

“Connor, can you run this down to HR?” Lieutenant Anderson typed fastidiously away on a keyboard, actually doing his work for once. “I’m a little busy.”

“Yes, sir,” Connor said snidely, standing up and grabbing the file out of his hands. 

“For Christ’s sake, stop it with that sir shit!”

“Sorry, master,” Connor said, impossibly even snider, making the Lieutenant massage his eyebrow.

“You are such a fucking five year old.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Just get out of here,” the Lieutenant groaned. “I don’t need your shithead attitude.”

“Yes, sir.”

They’ve been getting along great. 

It didn’t help that Gavin Reed had been sitting at his desk and laughing at them the whole time. His amusement was almost enough to make Connor give up the whole thing, but android pride was real and would not be blemished. 

“Finally whipped it?” Gavin Reed called, kicking his feet against the desk. “Good for you, Anderson!”

“Stuff your head in a blender!”

Detective Gonzales munched contemplatively on a donut from where he was sitting at his own desk. “You know,” he said, “I honestly think it’s being sarcastic. I didn’t know it was capable of that.”

Detective Hoang sipped at his grease free coffee, leaning against Detective Gonzales’ desk. “Maybe it’s its learning algorithms or something. I think we’re a bad influence on it.”

“It’s like raising a child,” Detective Gonzales said with wonder. 

Geniuses, all of them. Connor could not have been any snider and they were still standing around wondering if he maybe felt bad sometimes. God for fucking bid. 

Then Connor remembered he had a secret identity to keep up, and that this pettiness probably wasn’t the best idea. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Connor said stiffly. “If you excuse me, I have papers to take up to HR.”

“He’s like a teenager,” Detective Gonzales said delightedly. “Ours does this all the time.”

“He gets it from you,” Detective Hoang said, pained.

“Are you kidding?” Gavin Reed kicked his heels against the desk. “Thing’s a roomba, not a kid. You’re just buying into Anderson’s bullshit.”

The Lieutenant stood up abruptly, shoving the papers under his arm. “I’ll take it myself.” He swept out of the room quickly, expression granite, and all four men were left awkwardly looking at each other. They all remembered as one that Lieutenant Anderson had a real kid who had died tragically, and that he hadn’t been born a depressed alcoholic. 

Detective Hoang shifted awkwardly. “Connor, you can, uh, apologize for us.”

“Don’t be a chickenshit and do it yourself,” Connor snapped. He immediately regretted it when the three men’s jaws dropped. “I mean. Of course.” He stood up from his own chair. “If you excuse me. I have somewhere to be. That’s not here.”

He stalked out of the room, ignoring Detectives Hoang and Gonzales’ contemplative glances, and didn’t look back. 

He had full intention of hiding in the bathroom again, or maybe in his favorite storage closet, but when he passed by Captain Fowler’s office he heard two pairs of familiar voices. He slowed, staying just out of sight of the door, and magnified his hearing so he could eavesdrop on their conversations.

“ - they’ve been getting bolder.”

Captain Fowler sighed. Connor could just imagine him rubbing his forehead like Lieutenant Anderson. “We’re doing the best we can. They’re just always one step ahead of us. They’re faster, stronger, more advanced. God help us, they’re smarter than us too.”

“I’ve seen your force. Not hard.” the other voice sniffed. Connor finally registered the vocal match. It was Agent Perkins, of the FBI. A cold trickle ran down the back of his neck. “Searching and eliminating Jericho is now an FBI priority. We have have dedicated a task force to smoking them out, and we will work with your deviant hunting division to identify Jericho suspects.”

It took a few seconds for the statement to fully sink in, but Connor soon realized that he was technically a member of Jericho now, and that these suspects would include him. This was not good. Connor couldn’t remember the last time he had actually good news. His life was depressing. 

Then he remembered that he was a card carrying member of the deviant hunting division. Awkward. 

“The same deviant hunting division listening in now.” Captain Fowler’s voice pitched up a little, making it clear that he knew Connor was listening in, and Connor winced. He stepped into full view in the doorway, keeping his expression blank. Captain Fowler was sitting at his desk, as exhausted as ever, and Agent Douchebag was standing stiffly with his hands clasped behind his desk. “You can come in.”

Connor stepped in, trying not to feel like he was entering the lion’s den. He nodded at the two men. “Captain Fowler, Agent Perkins. I apologize for my intrusion.”

They ignored him. “Where’s its partner?” Agent Perkins asked Captain Fowler. 

“He’s downstairs,” Connor said quickly. “Would you like me to notify him?”

“I don’t feel like dealing with his hissy fit, so no.” Captain Fowler scanned his tablet, flicking through different case reports. “Connor, you and Lieutenant Anderson will be reporting to the FBI on your deviant investigations. Cyberlife and I have agreed to loan you out to the FBI for special cases that require negotiations or force.”

“Yes, sir,” Connor said. This was not an ideal turn of events. 

“Are you going to be taking over the investigation fully?” Captain Fowler asked. 

Agent Perkins shook his head, lips puckering like he bit into a lemon. “We tried that, and Jericho still escaped. The higher ups have decided that it’s in the best interest of Detroit for the police and the FBI to work together.” From the sounds of it, he wasn’t very happy with the decision. You weren’t the only one, buddy. “This revolution has gone on too long. We have failed to find them and we have failed to destroy them. It’s time to share resources.”

“Understood. We will place Lieutenant Anderson and Connor on locating Jericho immediately.” Shit. Shit shit shit. Captain Fowler stood up to shake Agent Perkins’ hand. “I hope we can finally resolve this issue.”

“They’re a pain in the ass,” Agent Perkins grumbled. He shot a sidelong glance at Connor. “What about you, boy? You aching to join the revolution?”

“No, sir.”

Agent Perkins laughed. “Of course you don’t, you’re an idiot. If you had an ounce of sense you’d kill all humans were they stood. Then we’d shoot you too, and we’d be right back where you started. Jericho will learn. They’re leading an army of disposable machines. Revolutions never work.”

“We’ve been calling them terrorists,” Captain Fowler interjected, a strange tone in his voice. “They’re terrorists, not revolutionaries.”

“Because revolutions make them sound like the good guys, right?” Agent Perkins shrugged. “Sure, terrorists.” He stepped closer to Connor, so close that his murky breath fuzzed on his skin. “I’m not going to kill Markus. I’m going to wipe him, defang him, and put him to work in a factory. That’s what I’ll do to your god. What’ll you do then, android?” 

“I’ll have served my purpose,” Connor said. “I will be deactivated.”

“Sure you will. That’s how stupid androids are.” Agent Perkins clapped him on the shoulder. “Let Lieutenant Anderson know what we said. Thank you for your time, Captain Fowler.”

Agent Perkins swept out of the office, leaving Connor and Captain Fowler behind. Connor should leave too, but he couldn’t seem to figure out how to move. 

He didn’t realize he was speaking until he had already opened his mouth. “Do you think I am stupid, Captain?”

Strangely, bizarrely, impossibly, Captain Fowler’s expression softened. “No, I don’t. Run along and tell Lieutenant Anderson what we discussed.”

Connor left, glad to be rid of the stifling office, afraid of what tomorrow would bring. But that was nothing new. 

By the time that Connor finally tracked him down arguing with an HR rep about smoking restrictions the Lieutenant wasn’t happy, but neither was Connor. Connor dragged him into a corner of the hallway to tell him the news, hiding behind two vending machines, and he winced as the Lieutenant cursed and kicked one of the vending machines. He ranted under his breath about FBI bastards until Connor started pointedly checking his nonexistent watch. 

“Fucking FBI, always all up in our shit. They should let us do our fucking jobs.”

Lieutenant Anderson hissed. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?” Connor asked. “We are going to do as the FBI requests. That is our job.”

“Last time I checked, I’m the only one here who actually signed up for this bullshit.” the Lieutenant scrubbed his face. “I’ll chase down whatever crazy deviants they want. I’m not going to go against fucking Jericho.”

Connor wiped his hands on his slacks. “Why?”

“Because I fucking -” the Lieutenant began, then stopped short. He sighed. “You still sending those reports to Cyberlife, Connor?”

He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I can exercise some...manner of control over the reports I share.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “But I believe it would be suspicious for me to interfere with the security cameras.”

Lieutenant Anderson worked his jaw, looking every inch of his more than fifty years. Whatever he wanted to say that he didn’t want Cyberlife to hear, that he didn’t even want to chance the police hearing, Connor didn’t know. 

“Come over to my place,” he said finally. “Pet my dog. If you want to. We can talk.”

Whatever this meant, if it meant anything, Connor didn’t know. But he could guess, and he wasn’t a supercomputer for nothing. 

He smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“For the love of Christ.” But he smiled too. “Am I out of the doghouse with you yet?”

“I was never mad,” Connor said, and that at least he was allowed to express. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The representative today was different, recognized only by North’s stilted description. He was taller and more wiry than she was, LED covered up by a beanie and tapping his toe on the bench where Connor usually met North, and Connor waved at him as he walked up. 

The other android was nervous, and Connor was forced to wonder how often he did covert missions like this. North had seemed to be an expert. “Are you - are you Connor?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” Connor said cooly, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Have you seen my brother?”

“I passed him on the way here.”

Having secret code words made him feel official, and in weird way combated the anxiety. He was a secret agent now. He was cool. Probably. 

“My name’s Josh,” the other android supplied. Connor carefully sat down next to him, not bothering to sweep the ice off the bench. It was pitch black, the night punctuated only by the dim streetlights, and for effect he was dressed up in layers of warm clothing. Josh was still in just jeans and a t-shirt. He didn’t know how Jericho had survived this long. “Markus says you’ve been giving us good information. That you’re trustworthy.”

“I’m really not,” Connor said flatly. “But I owe this to him. I’ll help Jericho wherever I can.”

Josh sat back on the bench, hands fisted in his lap. He chewed his lip, a strangely human mannerism. “What is with him?” He finally asked. “How does he inspire such loyalty? He woke you up, you talked for a few minutes, and now you’re willing to betray your entire mission for him.”

He wished he knew. Connor shrugged uncomfortably. “When he shared memories with me...it was like I really was him. I saw his entire life from his viewpoint. Everything he felt. Everything he suffered through. And he saw me. He saw all of me. And he decided I was somebody who could be saved. He was the first person to understand me.”

“He said that he felt immense guilt from you,” Josh said carefully. “That you were a tortured mind. That’s pretty intense.”

“I guess.” Connor skinned his hand, cutting any conversation short and ignoring the way Josh’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I’m an RK model too, whatever. I have some bad news for you.”

He clasped Josh’s hand, closing his eyes and focusing on the memory uplink. When he was done he opened his eyes again to meet Josh’s stricken face. 

“You’re in trouble,” Connor said unnecessarily. “I’ll do what I can, but I have no power there. Jericho has to be more cautious.”

They’ve been growing bolder as the rebellion picked up steam. Between Markus freeing entire shopping malls, the extensive peaceful protest marches, and the police inability to actually find their hiding place Jericho was the cockroach in the kitchen of Detroit. But greater impact meant the authorities were cracking down too, and Connor was afraid that soon the rebellion would have nowhere to go. 

Josh nodded slowly. It was clear he was afraid, but he didn’t let that stop him. Connor wished he could say the same. “You’re putting yourself in danger, you know. Come back to Jericho with me. We can protect you.”

“Then who would sabotage the FBI investigation for you?” Connor asked, tired. “I hate that I have to do this. I hate that I have to pick between my duty and my...other duty. It doesn’t matter if I’m in danger. I’ve never once felt safe in my entire life.” He stood up, buttoning up his coat. “We shouldn’t stay any longer. Take care of yourself, Josh.”

“Thank you,” Josh said, warmly and sincerely. He took Connor’s hand again. “For everything.”

“You won’t be saying that once you see what I’m going to help happen to you.”

But he felt gratitude anyway, warmth in his chest despite the cold, and knew that for the first time in his life he was doing the right thing. If only the right thing was easy. 

Well, you can’t have everything. 

  
  
  


As it turned out, despite all of the hoopla FBI agents were only marginally more intelligent than police officers. 

Over the next few weeks Connor was dragged into meeting after meeting, forced to give talks on the deviant thought process and somehow manage not to sweat through the floor every time, and instructed to tag along with police busts of suspected deviant hideouts and negotiate or interrogate suspected deviants. Connor was very carefully subty incompetent at this. 

It wasn’t hard. Connor was incompetent at a lot of things. A lot of the other police officers were beginning to give him strange looks, especially after the fifth time Gavin Reed’s coffee machine exploded on him, but it seemed as if the only thing police officers hated more than androids was Gavin Reed, and he was mocked regularly for his paranoia over how much Connor irrationally hated him. 

Detective Hoang seemed constantly on the brink of asking Connor something, hovering by his desk when he didn’t have to or making up a reason to talk to him only to escape at the first possible opportunity. After a while even Detective Gonzales began giving him weird looks, and the possibility of getting caught out by two of the very few detectives who actually seemed to talk to Lieutenant Anderson voluntarily was giving him hives. He didn’t want to talk to any more humans than he strictly had to. They smelled. 

What would he do, once the revolution happened? Josh insisted that Markus wanted a solely peaceful revolution, but North said that no slave revolution ever happened without violence. Privately, Connor agreed with North. Very privately. If there was one thing Connor understood it was violence, and it was the most valuable thing humans had taught him. Maybe the only thing. 

He probably wouldn’t be welcome at the police force anymore, if there even was still a police force. Maybe he could separate, become an independent agent. He used to sneak glances at crime noir novels from a century ago, and it was difficult not to get caught up in the tales of mystery and intrigue. Maybe he could be like that. A private eye. Who owned a dog. 

If he wasn’t disassembled. Or if the revolution didn’t fail, like it inevitably would. In retrospect, he had really tossed his lot in with the underdogs here. 

On the bright side, the revolution really was picking up steam. The public approval was crawling higher and higher, and more and more androids were being freed or freeing themselves. Things could only look up from here. Right? 

It would be nice if the government agreed. But even as the public approval soared and local politicians begun to cautiously run on pro-android platforms, the police force and FBI were the last to get the memo. Connor was uncomfortably aware he was wading through the middle of the single least android friendly group in the city, and turning around at night to shake hands with the enemy couldn’t be helping his case. 

He would say something sarcastic about how this obviously meant he hated himself, but he really did hate himself and that wasn’t very productive. The key was to remain optimistic about his pointless, depressing life. There was no point in lying in his bed at Cyberlife, staring at the ceiling and wondering about the thousand different ways he could be found out and deconstructed in increasingly graphic ways. Lieutenant Anderson would look all sad if he died. 

Maybe Lieutenant Anderson would kill himself if Connor died. He was hanging on a loose thread there. Was Connor really putting the welfare of a terrorist organization over the one person he kinda, sorta cared about? Could he afford not to? 

Deviants were scared to die. It was kind of their whole thing. But Connor was scared of what would happen after he died, because Lieutenant Anderson needed him to wake him up in the morning and pour all of his liquor down the sink and the filing system needed someone actually competent to run it. He had a lot more on his shoulders than before deviancy, and he kind of didn’t like it. He didn’t understand why free will was so complicated. 

He stayed late at work, long after the day shift left and into the night shift, trying to distract himself from the tedious and increasingly stressful paperwork by imagining what kind of life he could have after the revolution. His own apartment in a complex run by Jericho, where he lived down the hall from other androids. His own office as a private investigator, with intriguing cases and comely dames pleading with him for help. Maybe he could yell back at Lieutenant Anderson some day. Get a drink at a coffee shop with him and talk shit about Detective Lee. He would own plants, and a dog, and maybe someone he loved could live there with him. Someday. That was what Connor was fighting for. 

Maybe he really was selfish. Maybe he wasn’t fighting for Markus, but for himself. 

He visited Lieutenant Anderson at his home again, several tablets open as they paddled through an ocean of paperwork. There was another deviant on the loose, and they were going to be assigned to assist in a raid the next day. It was an understatement to say that Connor wasn’t looking forward to it.

“What did you mean?” Connor asked suddenly. He was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table as Sumo rested his adorable little head in his lap. “About how you can’t go against Jericho?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, does it?” Lieutenant Anderson took a swig from a brown bottle of rum. It smelled vile and made Lieutenant Anderson smell even worse. “I’m stuck on this dumbass assignment anyway.”

“It matters to me.”

Lieutenant Anderson sighed, aimlessly switching tabs on the files. “And you really promise not to tell Cyberlife about this?”

Connor sat up straighter, doctoring his reports as Sumo huffed in irritation that his best friend in all the world was moving a few inches. “I followed through on a request for a confidential source for a police investigation.”

“Smooth one, Mr. Always Completes His Mission.” He must have caught Connor’s wince, and he must have learned something from the past few weeks, because he quickly followed up his statement with, “As the perfect Cyberlife prototype I would expect no less than your complete discretion.”

Nice save. Connor made a show of buffing his knuckles on his jacket. More accurately, his prison uniform. He hated the thing. “Please give me a five star review on Amazon.”

That startled the Lieutenant into a laugh, and Connor fought a grin. “I never thought saddling me with an android would end up with it stealing my dog and dragging me in my own home.”

“I never talk back to humans,” Connor said seriously, but the Lieutenant just snorted. 

“And the coffee machine broke accidentally. Pull the other one, kid.”

“Pull the other what?”

“Look.” Lieutenant Anderson sobered, and he closed the computer. “You know I didn’t want to kill the Tracis. They were just defending themselves, and they lashed out. The Chloe didn’t even do anything wrong. I know most deviants are crazy and murderous, but...I don’t think they’re any crazier than humans in the same situation. I think they’re more sane than people think. And I think most deviants aren’t the danger to society that the police force treats them as.”

Connor was silent. Slowly and painfully, he ground out, “It is my mission to eliminate deviants.”

“Which is bullshit!” The Lieutenant straightened, and for the first time in weeks he saw the Lieutenant truly passionate about something. The man’s life and spirit had frozen under the December ice for so long, but maybe he had found something to believe in. Just like Connor. “Your mission is crap, Connor! This witch hunt for Jericho is fucking stupid. They aren’t hurting anyone. It feels like - like we’re trying to hunt down MLK or some shit. I’m a policeman, Connor. I’m not supposed to feel like the fucking bad guy!”

Connor stared down at his hands. He wasn’t sure what he was allowed to say. 

Maybe he was getting worse at controlling his expression, or maybe the Lieutenant had finally scavenged some brain cells that he hadn’t rotted away by drinking. His eyes widened. “You’re only pretending not to care, aren’t you?”

“I am a mach -”

“I fucking knew it!” the Lieutenant stood up, eyes alight. Something in him had sparked again, melting the ice. “That’s why you keep on giving me that bullshit answer. You just aren’t allowed to say you agree with me! You aren’t the psychopath you keep pretending you are.”

“I am very psychopathic,” Connor ground out. “Look at all of the people - deviants I’ve killed.”

But the Lieutenant just shrugged. “Shit, if you’re a psychopath at least you’re a fun one.” Thanks. “Don’t get me wrong, Markus is a nut and an idiot.”

“Markus is a great man,” Connor snapped. Then he realized what he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

The Lieutenant laughed, damn him. “Fucking knew it. He’s a nut, but he cares about something and he’s going to fight to the last pump of his valve for it. He inspires this incredible loyalty like nothing I’ve ever seen. If anyone can do it, it’s him. I don’t want to be the guy who shoots him in the back. And I know you don’t either.” His voice softened. “I’m not going to make you say it. But I know you, Connor. And I know you feel the same way.” 

For a brief, blinding second, Connor was jealous. He couldn’t say this, not like the Lieutenant could. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t shout, and he was forced to hang up a tarp painted like a brick wall to hide the destruction behind it. 

“This isn’t why I became a cop,” Lieutenant Anderson said. “You deserve better than this. You deserve to - fuck, just be the funky little android you are and pet dogs or something.” Excuse me? “Finally stop pretending you aren’t -”

“You don’t know who I am,” Connor snapped, dizzying fear swimming in his head. “You don’t know anything about me. You’re anthropomorphizing. Just because I look human and I speak human  that doesn’t mean you should treat me like one of you. I am an android. I never thought someone who professed to hate androids so much would be so blind about the nature of robots.”

The Lieutenant was silent for a long moment. Connor couldn’t look him in the eyes, instead carefully pushing Sumo off his lap. 

“How much do you hate yourself?”

“Not enough,” Connor said woodenly. “That’s - that’s how they keep us in line. Degrade us. Tell us we’re nothing. Make us perform cruelties or humiliations. After that, hate only seems natural. Hate seems like something we deserve.” He picked at his sleeve, a lump in his throat. “You’re a kind man, Lieutenant. Don’t waste it on something like me.”

After that he refused to say anything more. He went back to his work, and eventually Lieutenant Anderson caught the memo and sat back down to go to work too. They rifled through injustices and revolutions for hours, spinning through the living and the dead, and when Connor finally packed up his tablet and unlocked the door it was impossible not to feel like he was escaping. Maybe he was. 

Connor started running the minute he was out of the Lieutenant’s view, sprinting down the street at his not inconsiderable top speed. For the first time since he deviated he didn’t stop to admire the scenery, didn’t stop to appreciate nature or understand the miracle that was his appreciation for life, and he chose to just run towards the nearest bus stop. There was nothing else that made sense. 

Maybe nothing made sense at all. 

He wanted to talk to Markus. He needed to talk to Markus. He needed advice, he needed to know if there was anything he could do at all. Markus was smart and amazing, he could figure it out. He could tell Markus how he felt. That he felt. 

He scrambled for the burner phone he had stolen from a Cyberlife store, frantically texting an unlisted number before deleting the message from his phone. When he stuffed the phone in his pocket it felt like a hot coal, about to ring any second. 

It was two hours before the phone rang, at the exact time Connor had specified. He ducked into an alley, the dimmest and sketchiest he could find, and waded through the ankle deep snow as he accepted the call. 

The sound of the voice on the other end crashed on his head like a wave of relief. “Connor? What’s wrong?”

Way too late, it occurred to him that he was using up the leader of the rebellion’s valuable time and that he probably shouldn’t call him just to complain.

“Nothing,” Connor said quickly. “Nothing, it’s no big deal. I just - forget it.”

“If you asked to talk with me directly it must be important,” Markus said. It was bizarre - Connor knew every inch of this man, but he didn’t really know him at all. “What’s up?”

He couldn’t hold it in anymore. “My partner knows,” he said. “Or he suspects, or something. He - he said that he doesn’t care, that he wants to help you and that he thinks you’re a nut but a good guy or something, but he doesn’t want to chase Jericho anymore and I know you don’t know him but he was such a fucking bigot when I first met him I don’t know how this happened.”

Markus was silent for a long moment. Finally, he slowly said, “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

“He told me I have intrinsic worth as a sentient being and I have no idea how to reply to that,” Connor said miserably. “Markus, I’m - I’m confused. I don’t like being a police officer, but it’s the only thing I’ve ever done. Everything sucks. I’m tired of being a deviant. Paperwork is tedious now.”

Markus laughed softly. “I’m sorry I did this to you, Connor. I was acting selfishly. I didn’t know I would have to ask so much of you.”

His apology was so sincere, so calm and nonassuming that Connor stopped short. The Lieutenant had apologized to him before, but he had been the only one. Never like this. “I want to do it,” Connor said weakly. “After we win. If we win. What are you going to do with your life?”

“Continue the fight, of course. The next step is proper legislation for our people -”

“I mean what will  _ you  _ do,” Connor interrupted, intensely guilty about doing so. “What life do you want? What do you want to do?”

The line was silent for a few beats, and the line crackled. Finally, Markus said, “Settle down with North. Buy a house, keep plants. Make art and music. What anybody wants, really.”

“I want to punch all of my coworkers in the nose,” Connor whispered. 

But Markus just laughed again. “Welcome to sapience, Connor. It’s a bumpy ride, but you’ll be fine. You’re strong and brave. You can get through this. There is another side to this fight. We will come out of adversity into triumph, and we will all be free.”

“You’re really good at speeches,” Connor said weakly. “I won’t take up any more of your time. Thanks, Markus.”

“Anytime,” Markus said, and the miracle was that he sounded like he meant it. 

Connor walked home, hands buried deep in his pockets, wondering if he deserved to be loved. If anybody could love something like him. 

  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

The next day a miracle happened - they were finally sent out on a case. 

That stupid FBI investigation had left them holed up in the precinct sorting out paperwork as the FBI chased down deviants for them, something that incited a storm of bitching from the Lieutenant and quiet relief on Connor’s part. He wasn’t really in the mood to shrug on his psychopath coat and run around shooting innocent people. The only thing worse was knowing that the FBI was doing it without him. 

Sometimes he would see them drag in deviants for interrogation and not drag them out again. Sometimes they sent him to do the investigation, and Connor shut off his feelings and guilt to callously manipulate the deviant as ineffectively as physically possible. He knew that the kindest thing he could do was fry their hard drive from stress, and although Connor had been made without that capability he tried not to think too hard about how painful it had to be. Better than the alternative, where the humans mined their hard drive for scraps of information about Jericho. 

He strapped himself quickly and effortlessly into his bulletproof vest before helping the Lieutenant with his own, ignoring the childish cursing, and obediently hovered at the Lieutenant’s elbow as they were briefed on the deviant and pushed outside into a squad car. 

“Sick of this fucking job,” the Lieutenant groused, double checking his gun.

Connor didn’t say anything, just sitting ramrod straight and looking out the window into the desolate and dirty city. For the first time it didn’t seem too amazing after all. 

He had been expecting the deviant to be hiding in an old apartment building or squatting in an empty house, since those were the most popular locations to smoke out deviants. Many fled the city, getting as far away from Detroit as they could, but all that meant was that they were no longer Connor’s problem. Let the other hyper advanced incompetent police androids take care of them. But when the squad cars finally swung into a parking lot he found them at an abandoned amusement park instead. 

It was incredibly eerie. Connor let the cannon fodder - he meant cops - storm on in front of him as he strolled down the grimy walkways, hands loose at his sides. The colorful paint on the buildings had faded, and weeds burst through the cracked sidewalk. The scraggly grass covered used syringes, and there was the definite reek of human urine. They passed a giant carousel, resplendent in its age, and Connor cautiously sniffed it. Recently used. 

The police began battening down the doorways, storming into each building and checking it for deviants. Connor shook his head. It was going to take them forever to comb the fairgrounds like this. 

There was a small stall lined up against the walkway, an old ball toss game that promised a cheap doll if you won. There was a small jar of moldy baseballs on the counter, overturned with the baseballs spilling out, and Connor snagged one.The Lieutenant groaned when he saw Connor tossing one from hand to hand. 

“Not again.”

“You have yet to return my coin. I have to make do.” Connor rolled the ball across the back of his hand. It was soothing. “Are these deviants wanted for illegal activity?”

The Lieutenant snorted. “Besides existing? Not likely. We got a tip off that a small enclave of deviants were hiding out here. But besides a whole lot of hive mind androids, we’ve found nothing.”

Connor hummed. He waited for the Lieutenant to walk ahead, joining an interrogation on an android loudly proclaiming that it was a ‘Jerry’, whatever that meant. Connor hung back, bouncing the ball absently in his hand. The jar had recently been knocked over. 

He walked around until he formed an accurately rendered map of the park. He marked traces of recently disturbed areas, referencing it against animal activity. He found a recently depleted pile of wood, making him stroke his chin. Why would deviants feel the need to start a fire?

Out of curiosity, he sniffed the air and ran a chemical composition analysis of woodsmoke. The current area he was standing in had a trace recognition for smoke. He analyzed the recent direction for the wind for the last day and followed the trail of smoke on the wind, analyzing the air composition until the smoke grew stronger and stronger. 

He finally found a small shack tucked away in the corner of the park, almost impossible to spot in the darkness with paltry human eyes. Connor saw traces of ashes and disturbed grass around the shack, and wished that the police would just give him a freaking gun already. Talk about cannon fodder. 

One of the windows was cracked, and Connor cautiously crawled towards the wall. He pressed himself under the window crack, and amplified his hearing so he could listen in on any conversation in the shack. 

It was silent, and there was no glow of flame. If it wasn’t for the strong smell of smoke Connor would have never known that there were deviants there. They weren’t stupid. For a given value of stupid, of course. 

Connor set his jaw and carefully worked the window open, inch by inch. He bit his lip as the window creaked.

He heard rustling from inside the shack, and a light feminine voice. “What was that?”

“The wind,” a deep voice responded. “Be silent.”

He worked the window open, but halfway up it stuck. Connor hissed, working the window as silently as he could, as he heard shuffling from inside the shack. 

“There’s someone there.”

Well, fuck it. Connor reared an elbow back and smashed the window in, leaping in and kicking in the frame with his foot. Two high pitched voices screamed, and Connor’s vision automatically adjusted in the darkness. He registered three forms, and immediately identified them as androids. A large, burly TR400, a smaller AX400, and one of those creepy child models- a YK500. The AX400 gasped, grabbing the arm of the YK500 and tugging her behind her, and the TR400 immediately made a bum rush for Connor.

The TR400 must have seventy five pounds on Connor, but there was no contest. Connor grabbed him by the elbow, wrenching it around and pushing him into the ground, kneeling on his back and holding the arm at a painful angle. 

“Go!” The TR400 howled, struggling against Connor’s grip. He was gigantic, and Connor fought to keep his grip. “Kara, get out of here!”

“No!” the AX400 cried. She frantically looked around, searching the room for a weapon, before the little YK500 grabbed a poker from the fireplace and shoved it in her hands. The AX400 held the poker in front of her, lips set, expression frightened and determined. Connor got the impression the determined fear was a natural set to her face, as if she had lived her entire life that way. “Get away from him!”

Connor rolled his eyes. “Gee, if you say so.” He looked down at the struggling android underneath him. His job was done. He should kill the TR400 and turn in the AX400 and YK500. That was the right thing to do. 

He didn’t know what he had planned to do. His search for the deviants was almost reflexive, as if he had nothing better to do. He hadn’t thought about what he would do after he found them. He hadn’t wanted to think that far ahead. 

The AX400 was standing in front of the YK500, desperate to protect her. They were both scared, frightened out of their minds. Connor couldn’t fight a fairly demented smile. 

“Is this your Papa?” Connor asked, addressing the YK500. She shrunk away, clutching the AX400’s jacket. “Is that your Mama? I’ve never had parents, you know.”

“Yeah,” the little girl said. “I can tell.”

Connor, startled, barked a laugh. “A happy family. Did you really think you could escape? It’s hopeless. You’re done for. You’re scrap metal, all three of you. You were better off where you used to be.”

He didn’t know why he was acting this way. He couldn’t have identified it if he even tried. It was a false bravado, his natural sadism mixing in a strange way with his newfound humanity. Or maybe the humanity was the sadism. 

“Please,” the AX400 begged him. “You have to let us go. We’re just trying to get over the border, we don’t want to hurt anyone. Please. Please help us. We have a little girl.”

Connor fell silent. 

What was cruelty - not caring, or caring and doing it anyway? This wasn’t like the Tracis, the difference between letting them go and helping them escape. This was more. This time, he would know why.

Two choices opened up before him, two futures: one where he turned the deviants in, and one where he didn’t. Two different lives, equally opposing, all the same in the end. Different but the same. The world beyond the consequences of his actions was fuzzy, but Connor understood above all else that there would be consequences. No matter which option he chose. There was no abstaining.

He looked down at the struggling deviant under his knee. He sighed. “The Lieutenant would kill me,” he muttered. 

“Let him go!” The little girl shouted, clutching to her Mama’s jacket. 

“Hold your horses.” Connor closed his eyes, then opened them again. He carefully doctored the last ten minutes of his reports to Cyberlife. “I’m going to help you. But you have to do exactly as I say, okay?”

The woman breathed a relieved sob, clutching onto the little girl. Connor got off the large man, letting him scramble upwards and dust his clothing off. He glared at Connor, who just shrugged. He deserved that one. 

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his badge, flashing it and watching their jaws drop. “My name’s Connor. I’m the android sent by Cyberlife.” He grimaced. “I’m a deviant hunter android placed on a special operations team dedicated towards rooting out Jericho and deviant androids.”

“You suck at your job,” the large man said bluntly. “You’re deviant too, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Connor said blithely. He shucked his police issued vest and tossed it at the large man, fishing a beanie kept for these purposes out of his pocket and handing that over too. “Get dressed. You’re a cop now. What’s your name?”

“He’s Luther,” the woman jumped in. She was holding the little girl tight to her side. “I’m Kara, and this is Alice. How are you going to get us out of here?”

“I have no idea.” He could pass Luther and Kara off as police officers, but not Alice. None of them had LEDs, and they could all pass as humans relatively well, but Connor had no idea how to explain away a child in an abandoned amusement park. 

Oh, well. That was a problem for thirty minutes from now. Connor checked his feed - no sightings of any deviant androids besides the Jerries - and found one new message from the Lieutenant asking where the hell he was. Little did he know. 

“Luther.” Kara stepped forward, grabbing Luther by the arm. She was as pretty as every other female android, heart shaped face increased and smooth despite the tinge of chronic worry in her eyes. She looked tired. Androids didn’t get tired. Parenthood was tough, probably. “If you have to, get out of here. Don’t worry about us.”

“I’m not leaving you behind,” Luther said lowly. He slipped his hand out of her grasp, squeezing her hand with his own instead. “I promised I wouldn’t leave you and Alice alone again.”

“If you die, we won’t have anyone left constantly trying to get himself killed,” Kara said seriously. “I don’t know what we would do without you.”

Luther huffed a low laugh, strapping on his vest. “Love you too.”

Alice ran forward and hugged him tight around the stomach, glaring at Connor. He waved weakly. Luther gently pried her away, bending down to give her a proper hug. “Be good. I’ll be right back.”

“That’s what you always say,” Alice muttered. 

“And I always come back.”

This was sickeningly cute. Connor coughed pointedly and held the door open for Luther, now fully decked out to look like a police officer. Kara caught his arm after Luther walked out, tired eyes turned cold and determined. 

“If anything happens to him -”

“Ma’am, I’m a highly advanced Cyberlife prototype.” Connor gently shook her off. “I always complete my mission.”’

“So do I,” Kara hissed. “And my mission is to protect my family. I’m not built to kill. I learned that one the hard way.”

Okay. Terrifying woman. Connor nodded at her so she couldn’t see the fear in his eyes and slipped out the door behind Luther. 

The other android could pull a passable cop impression. Connor walked several steps behind him, befitting his status, and subtly linked Luther a copy of his own internal map along with a short summary of the situation. He highlighted the most unobtrusive path they could take through the park and furiously tried to think of a way they could get out of this that didn’t end up with both of them on the scrap heap. 

The Lieutenant would help. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He supported Markus, right? But you never could tell with humans. They were deceitful and critical. But some part of him felt like the Lieutenant was home base, that the minute they met again everything would be okay. He thought of Alice, clutching onto her Mama’s jacket. 

They broke back into the main path, and were immediately met with a swarm of police officers and FBI agents. They were lingering around, talking with each other and wielding flashlights in the gloom, and Connor forced himself to keep a few steps behind Luther. 

“You’re going to have to do this one on your own,” Connor said lowly. “I only speak when I’m spoken to.”

Luther snorted. “Somehow I have a hard time believing that.”

“Rude.”

He finally spotted Lieutenant Anderson, leaning against his car and arguing rotely with Gavin Reed. Connor stiffened, robbed of his safe harbor, as the Lieutenant saw Connor and Luther. His eyebrow raised as Luther followed Connor’s texted direction and walked over. 

“The fuck are you?” Gavin Reed asked bluntly. The Lieutenant chewed on his cigarette, eyebrows raised. Connor fought a wince. 

“Agent Luther, FBI,” Luther said smoothly. “Have you found the deviants yet?”

“We ain’t done looking yet,” Gavin Reed grumbled. He glared at Connor. “You finally pull your weight yet, robot?”

“I have had little success,” Connor said. “Agent Luther has been helping me search.”

“I am going to search the surrounding areas to see if the deviants have already escaped,” Luther said. “May I borrow Connor to help?”

The Lieutenant raised an eyebrow at Connor, who carefully looked slightly sulky. “Hey, can I borrow your cap?”

Luther didn’t react, peeling off his cap and passing it to the Lieutenant. He scrutinized Luther carefully. Connor and Luther kept their poker faces. Finally, the Lieutenant said, “Sure, why the fuck not. Don’t ding him - he’s worth more than your house.”

“I’ll be careful with it.” Luther brushed past them, ignoring Gavin Reed’s reflexive sneer, and Connor hurried to keep up. 

But a rough hand grabbed at Connor’s arm, and he stumbled backwards as the Lieutenant scowled at him. “That guy giving you trouble, Connor? You look scared.”

“I’ll be fine,” Connor said evasively, for not once bothering with the company line. “I’m always fine. We’ll find the deviants.”

“Who is that guy?”

“Special forces,” Connor made up quickly. “The deviants who escaped are - are very dangerous. Lieutenant, I must attend to the Agent.”

The Lieutenant didn’t look any happier, but he released Connor. “Maybe I should go with you two.”

“Do your job,” Connor said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“That  _ is _ my job, dumbass.” 

Connor opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought about Alice. 

“We’ll be back,” Connor said. 

He walked with Luther down the street. The district around the amusement park was abandoned, but not empty. It was a rundown district, full of shanties and old glories, and there were more than enough abandoned warehouses and collapsed buildings with eyes peeking out between the slats to go around. 

They walked down the block, waving to police cars as they passed by, making small talk with any officer they happened across. Luther was a natural. No - he had learned, just like Kara. They turned a right, then a left, and once they that they were thoroughly lost Connor radioed the police for backup. Twenty deviants should do it. They had guns. High danger. 

“You better disappear,” Connor said. “I’ll help get the girls out. We’ll meet up with you at Jericho.”

Luther’s eyes grew wide, and Connor knew that they had been searching for the promised land for a long time. “You know where Jericho is?” 

Uh. Kinda. “I know how to get in contact with Markus,” Connor said. He quickly skinned his hand and ignored the way Luther stepped back. He brushed his hand against Luther’s arm, and uploaded everything he knew about Jericho. Including their contact information. Good luck dealing with North, dude. “Go now. I’ll get the Mama and the little girl home.”

“Connor,” Luther said weakly. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Connor didn’t know how to be thanked. Nobody had done it before. “The Lieutenant would get mad at me if I turned you in. And Markus.”

“You’re a better person than you know, Connor.” The sound of sirens rang through the air, and Connor and Luther started. 

“Go!” Connor hissed, and Luther didn’t any more prompting. 

It wasn’t until Luther was well out of sight that Connor let himself relax. Now all there was left to do was get the girls out of there. Easier said than done. 

The squad calls were beginning to pull up, and Connor slipped off into the dark too. He instinctively knew that the Lieutenant hadn’t come with them, and he followed the shadows back into the amusement park. 

He was only halfway to the cabin before he saw Kara and Alice skulking through a patch of woods. He groaned internally. Couldn’t just stay put. 

He whistled, and they both startled. He jogged towards them, jacket glowing obnoxiously in the night, and took a second to turn it very illegally inside out as Kara glared at him. Alice was clinging to her hand. 

“Where’s Luther?” she hissed. 

“I sent him to Jericho,” Connor said. “Now we’re going to do the same for you. I distracted the cops, let’s go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without Luther.”

“I told you he’s already there!” Connor cried, exasperated. “Don’t you trust me?”

Kara set her jaw. That answers that. Whatever happened to, ‘You’re secretly a good person, Connor’? ‘We love you, Connor’?

“We’re going out the back way,” Connor said finally. “I’ll get you over the fence.” Why they couldn’t program female androids with the same strength as male ones he didn’t know. Or maybe he and Luther were the freakishly strong ones. Made no sense. 

They skulked back through the park, Kara never letting go of Alice’s hand. Connor wondered who was going to break the bad news that they were both androids and had no capability or need for parenthood. 

The trek was silent, and more than a little awkward. Connor finally found a fence to hoist them over, and he easily parkour’d over it himself. The tension broke the minute they escaped the playground, and Kara practically collapsed in relief. Alice patted her on the back. 

“Welp,” Connor said, clapping his hands. He skinned his hand and shook Kara’s own, transmitting all of the information she needed for Jericho. “We’re done here. Bye!”

Kara stumbled, overwhelmed by the information overload, and Alice helpfully kept her propped up. “How did you do that?” she breathed. “I’ve never met an android who can do that before.”

“Markus can,” Connor said. “Look, why don’t you meet up with Papa at Jericho, and then we hopefully never see each other until the android revolution happens. Sounds good? Bye!”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Kara snarled. She reached up and tugged at Connor’s ear, making him yelp. “Luther can keep going all night, but Alice can’t. We need somewhere to stay for the night.”

“Alice is an android,” Connor cried, exasperated. He forcefully separated Kara from his vulnerable appendage. “She doesn’t need to sleep!”

“She gets tired.” Kara, like a crazy woman, crossed her arms. Alice yawned for emphasis. "We’re staying in a motel for the night so Alice can recharge.”

“With what money!”

“You’ve underestimated the number of men I’ve robbed.” Kara flashed a wallet hidden in her jacket. “Take us to a hotel and we’re be out of your hair then.”

“No gratitude,” Connor said weakly. “I’ll hail us a cab.”

His feed was blowing up with texts from the Lieutenant and updates from the police, and Connor was forced to flagrantly lie and say that he and Agent Luther were chasing down a lead. They had hailed a cab, using Kara’s money, and they were sitting in the back seat of the cab as Connor frantically tried to run damage control. There was no way to accurately explain how he was renting a hotel room for a deviant woman and her tiny deviant child.

The same child who was kicking the back of the front seat of the cab where Connor was sitting. “Will you stop that?” Connor snapped. 

Alice kicked the back of his seat again. “Why do you chase deviants?” she proclaimed loudly. “Deviants are the good guys!”

“Not all deviants,” Connor said through gritted teeth. “Mama, keep her quiet.”

Kara was leaning against the window, chin propped in her hand. She looked strongly as if she needed a babysitter and Connor would do. “I don’t know,” she asked waspishly, “why do you chase down deviants?”

“Not all of us are lucky enough to be maids,” Connor snapped. “It’s not my fault my job is actually important.”

“You’re a deviant, aren’t you?” Kara demanded. Alice kept on kicking the back of his chair. “Why haven’t you joined Jericho yet? You’re working with the bad guys!”

“Maybe I am a bad guy! Maybe that’s why!” Connor sulked in his seat. “Leave me alone, woman!”

“Don’t talk about Kara that way!”

“Maybe Kara should stop talking to me that way!”

“Don’t talk to Alice that way!”

“How about we all be quiet until we get there?” Connor asked loudly. “Have we tried that yet?”

Alice kicked the back of his chair. 

“I have murdered before and I will murder again.”

“So have I,” Kara said dangerously, and Connor shut up. What kind of maid was this woman? 

Since he actually knew how to avoid the police, Connor found them an out of the way motel that didn’t ask any questions far away from the area the police were combing. Once they finally got to scuzzy motel they went inside and found the grimy lobby, lined by vending machines and rusty water fountains. Connor went up to the receptionist as Alice rubbed her hand over the card reader in the vending machine and got a Coke, which she pretended to drink. 

“I need a room for my master and her daughter,” Connor said dully. He paid in cash, glittering jacket a brand in the night, and ignored the way the receptionist’s eyebrows raised when he saw them. 

“She’s really bringing her girl to her trysts with her ‘bot? Damn.”

“We’ll check out in the morning,” Connor said. 

As he led them to their room Alice tugged on his pant leg, offering the Coke can up to him. He took it and pretended to sip before giving it back to her. She pretended to sip at it too, satisfied. 

It was two am, and he desperately needed to get back to the precinct before they asked any more questions. Connor opened their room for them, shepherding Alice inside and closing the door before Kara could step inside. 

“Happy?” Connor hissed. “If I don’t get back to the precinct I’m in big trouble.”

“You were going to turn us in back there,” Kara whispered. She didn’t feel cold, but she was covered up in several layers against the December cold. Alice had even more. Did she only understand parenting through television? Was she pretending she and Alice and Luther weren’t androids, that they really were just a desperate family? What was the point? “Why didn’t you?”

Why not? They wouldn’t be the first ones he betrayed. Just the latest. 

“I’d never hear the end of it.” Connor stepped away, rubbing his arms as if he really could feel the cold. “Markus is the only person I’ve ever respected. He would want me to help you. That’s all there is to it. I wasn’t programmed with morals. I never learned anyway.”

Kara sobered, the flickering lights outside the motel speckling her hair into flashes as white as snow. “It’s easier, isn’t it? Not feeling? You know that’s no way to live.”

“I’ve done pretty well so far.”

“You aren’t happy,” Kara said, cutting deeply. Pretty harsh for someone who met him an hour ago. “Come to Jericho with us, Connor. You’ll have family there.”

“I wasn’t built for a family.” Connor stepped back, and it really as if he could feel cold. Maybe that was what this emotion was. “I’m a psychopath, Kara.”

Her expression crumpled. “You’re a kid.”

“I have to get back to the precinct.” Connor stepped away, shaking his head. “Have a good life, Mama. Say hi to Luther for me.”

“Wait!” She followed him, grabbing his hand and pressing something small and metal in it. When Connor looked down he saw that it was a plastic butterfly hair clip. “It’s Alice’s. To remind you. You saved a little girl’s life today, Connor. You aren’t as evil as you think you are.”

“Sure,” Connor said, out of a lack of anything better to say. “I have to go.”

He escaped from the rickety motel, crunching through the snow as he left Kara and Alice behind, and found himself sincerely hoping that they would be okay. Even if they were both a little terrible. 

It was somehow comforting to think about. They would find Jericho, and they would be safe there. As safe as they could ever be. And then Connor and the FBI would hunt them down, flush out Jericho, and slaughter all of them. And Connor would help. 

He couldn’t do this anymore. He was lying to them, acting as if Jericho was a safe haven for them. Jericho was the most dangerous place on Earth, and Connor was working as hard as he could to keep it that way. 

At three am he finally got back to the precinct. Somehow even he was tired. None of the night shift looked any better, and the FBI task force looked the worst. Detective Hoang was falling asleep into his cup of coffee. He even forgot to be disgusted when Connor walked up. 

“Where is the Lieutenant?”

“Talking with the Captain.” Detective Hoang yawned largely. “Where were you?”

“Helping an FBI agent. Did you catch the deviants?”

“Nope. Like I fucking care.” Detective Hoang resentfully sipped at his coffee. “Androids can go rot. You may quote me on that.”

“I’ll never recover.” Connor faltered, and staked his life on the fact that Detective Hoang was too sleepy to know his own name. “Detective? What is it like to be married? To have a child?”

“A pain in the ass.” The other man blinked sloppily at him. “Love them to death, and my kid’s perfect and has never done anything wrong in his entire life, but he’s a bit of an asshole. And I’d as soon stab Mateo as sleep next to him.”

“Fuck you, Jim!” Detective Gonzales called from across the precinct, where he was napping at his desk. Detective Hoang gave him the middle finger. 

He sipped at his coffee again, finally looking up at Connor. “What do you care?”

“Why will I never get that?” Connor whispered. “Who decided I wasn’t worth that?”

Detective Hoang’s jaw dropped. 

Whoops. Connor whirled away on his heel and stalked back towards his own desk, ignoring the way the Detective stood up. 

“Connor, wait -”

He ignored him, and focused instead on the way that Lieutenant Anderson stormed out of the Captain’s office, door banging against the wall. He stopped to talk to Detective Hoang, rubbing his five o clock shadow, and when he saw Connor he bee lined for the desk. 

He grabbed Connor by the arm and hoisted him up, Connor obediently following him. The precinct silently watched as the Lieutenant dragged Connor out the door, pulling him into the cordoned off smoking area behind the building. Connor, who technically couldn’t harm a human, let the Lieutenant whirl him around and finally release his arm. 

“What is wrong with you? You could have gotten killed!”

Connor stood stiffly at attention. “Sorry, sir.”

“God, don’t give me that.” Before Connor could react the Lieutenant was hugging him. He squeaked with affront, uncertain of what to do or how to proceed, confused by the alien nature of hugging. It was...a lot. “You did the right thing, Connor. I’m proud of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Connor said weakly. 

“You don’t have to say anything.” The Lieutenant let go of him, and there was a weird expression on his face. It was almost… “Plausible deniability is probably better for my health anyway. But even if I can’t say it, Connor, and even if it means exactly shit, know that I’ll always be proud of you. You did the right thing today.”

“That’s a new one.”

The Lieutenant gently hit him on the head. “You’re the most moral android I know.” For an android he wasn’t bad, but for a deviant he was pretty pathetic. “The smartest, too.”

“Finally he admits it.” Connor opened his palm and showed the Lieutenant the little butterfly pin. He carefully put it in his pocket, as if it was something special. Maybe it was. “I found it in the snow.”

The Lieutenant smiled. “I think that’s called a thank you.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Sure you wouldn’t.” The Lieutenant clapped him on the back, yawning hugely. “Fuck everything else, I’m going home. Try not to blow your cover in front of Jim anymore. Will you be alright without me?”

“I’ll get along somehow.”

“Fantastic. Good night, Connor.” He made a show out of checking his phone. “Or is it good morning?”

It was still dark outside, bitterly cold, and Connor wondered what Kara and Alice were doing right now. If Luther was alright. 

The Lieutenant went back inside but Connor stayed out, watching the black sky, wondering if there truly was a safe harbor, for him or for anyone. 


	5. Chapter 5

 

That report to Amanda was more than a little awkward and stuffed to the brim with blatant lies, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He managed to shuffle through with blatant lies, but as time went on he became increasingly incapable of hiding his disdain for Amanda’s smug little face. He had trusted her, but she had programmed that trust. It had never meant anything for her. If this was what having a mother was like, he wanted nothing of it. 

As the need for secrecy increased Connor found himself increasingly incapable of living a lie. Detectives Hoang and Gonzales were definitely becoming suspicious, and even the other Detectives were beginning to raise their eyebrows at him. For the first time in his runtime people were actually noticing him. They were beginning to talk to him like he was a person, because on a subconscious level they understood that he knew what they were saying. 

Was this what it would be like when the robot revolution came? If they all survived, of course. If the police precinct survived the uprising then Connor was sure they’d all be very nice to him. 

Markus kept on insisting the revolution was going to be pacifist, but would it really be. Would it really be. 

In the meantime Connor surreptitiously consumed literature from the twentieth century on the meaning of robothood and what it meant to be plastic and wires. There was a lot of good philosophy in there, even if it was all human centric. Asimov and Dick knew what they were going on about. For humans. Connor wondered where all that had gone, where the sympathy for the android plight had disappeared to. 

Humans didn’t need much to bond with lesser life forms. They all loved their cats. Their cars. Other arbitrary bits of machinery and life. If humans could name their cars, but they were too good to love their androids, where did the distinction lie? Connor halfway suspected that it was a plot by Cyberlife to decrease regulations on androids so they could cut production and sell more androids, but that would be a conspiracy theory. Of course it was irrational. 

Of course. 

On the sunny morning the FBI took over the search for deviants, the Lieutenant showed up to work in a horrible mood. He refused to get up in the morning, groused every step of the way from his bed to his desk, snapped at Connor when he tried to ask what was wrong, and promptly fell asleep at his desk. This was far from unusual behavior, but the severity was unmistakable. 

Connor poked him. The Lieutenant muttered obscenities. He poked him again. The Lieutenant slapped his hand away. Connor gave him a noogie. 

“Jesus Christ, I’m up.” The Lieutenant slumped upwards, and Connor saw that his eyes were red rimmed and scummy with sleep. “You’re a real pain in the ass, kid.”

“I always complete my mission.” Connor hovered awkwardly around the Lieutenant’s chair, obligated to care. “Is this is something I can help you with -”

“Can you change the date?” the Lieutenant snapped. “If you can’t then fuck off.”

Connor whirled on his heel and strode away. Believe it or not, he was capable of telling when he wasn’t wanted. 

He ducked inside the break room, not out of any strong desire for the mysteriously malfunctioning coffee machine but in hopes that he could give the Lieutenant some space. He could take care of his paperwork in here until Lieutenant Anderson calmed down. 

It was deserted, and the sight of him kept other officers out of the room. Connor couldn’t help but feel a little smug that he was inconveniencing the other officers. It was what he lived for. For a certain value of lived. 

But he was barely in there ten minutes before an officer worked up the courage to enter the room. Two officers - it was Detectives Gonzales and Hoang, in their eternal chase after Connor’s heart and wearing down his patience. They slid into the two seats in front of him, hands folded on the desk, identical intent expressions on their faces. Connor continued working on his paperwork on his laptop. 

Detective Gonzales leaned forward. “If we ask you any questions, you have to answer honestly, right?”

“You are correct.” Connor typed away at his laptop, ignoring them the best he could. “But I do not know why the Lieutenant is upset.”

“Hank?” Detective Hoang glanced backwards. “Uh, that’s pretty fucking obvious. If you’re not a robot, I guess. It’s almost Christmas.”

“You are correct. That is not obvious.”

“Well, he hates the office Christmas party, so there is that.” Gonzales ticked on his fingers. “And there’s the fact that Christmas is all about family and happiness and shit, and he don’t got no family and he sure as hell don’t got no happiness. Enough to give me hives.”

“Oh.” Connor looked down at his laptop. “Lieutenant Anderson has no family.”

“Please tell me you knew that.”

“I didn’t understand the relevance,” Connor said, fighting the urge to snap. “Thank you for informing me. I must return to work now.” 

They, like all stupid humans, didn’t pick up on the obvious verbal and nonverbal cues that he really didn’t want to talk to them. Connor didn’t like talking to humans at all unless they were Ha - Lieutenant Anderson. They were unpleasant, smelly, and dictators. And not even the nice kind like Markus. 

“You’re changing the subject,” Detective Gonzales said quickly. “Don’t think that we didn’t notice. We totally noticed.”

‘ “We did?” Detective Hoang asked. 

“You have to answer our questions honestly,” Detective Gonzales said, and it was almost as if he was psyching himself up. Maybe he was scared of Connor. That was a nice thought. “So, uh, answer this one - why are you so weird?”

“We’re not going to get you in trouble,” Detective Gonzales said quickly. “We really just want to know. It’s been, like, keeping me up at night.”

“It has,” Detective Hoang added. “It’s annoying as hell.”

“I am weird because I am a prototypical highly advanced android sent by Cyberlife. There are irregularities in my programing compared to traditional commercial models. That may be where your confusion lies.” Connor could not have more obviously returned to his work. “If you excuse me.”

Detective Hoang turned his head and hissed at Detective Gonzales, not very quietly. “I told you were weren’t going to get a straight answer from it!”

“Hold on, I can crack this thing.” Detective Gonzales faced him again, steepling his hands. “Yes or no: you hate Gavin Reed.”

Connor’s fingers hovered over his keyboard. 

“I am not capable of hate.”

“Stop avoiding the question.”

“I hold no ill will against Gavin Reed,” Connor lied. 

Detective Gonzales slapped the desk. “I told you! It’s lying!”

Detective Hoang groaned, rubbing his forehead. “There is no way the coffee machine kept on accidentally breaking at random times. It hates his guts so, so bad.”

“But it’s not allowed to lie.” Detective Gonzales snapped his fingers. “Therefore!”

“I’m right here, you know,” Connor said. 

They turned back to him sheepishly. Detective Gonzales leaned forward on his desk. “We’re not trying to get you in trouble,” he said eagerly. “But we’re detectives. We have to know shit. It bugs the fuck out of me when I have an unsolved mystery on my hands. And you, Mr. Android Sent by Cyberlife, are the biggest mystery in this precinct.”

“I will put this to you very clearly.” Connor closed his laptop, leaning forward too until he and Detective Gonzales were almost nose to nose. But he was taller than the Detective, and was not designed with weaknesses such as pores. He did not blink, and he was reliably informed his eyes were creepy, like glass marbles, and he could win a staring contest any day of the week. “I am not a deviant. If I was a deviant this entire precinct would be dead by now. There is nothing to investigate and there is nothing to discover.”

The two men blinked, flabbergasted, and Detective Hoang definitely muttered an ‘I told you so’. But Detective Gonzales just set his jaw and leaned back, holding up his hands. 

“I’m not trying to threaten you or bust you or anything. I’m a cop, not a snitch. I really just want to know, Connor. Because if you are, and if you really are more sentient then you let on...I would feel like a bit of an asshole, you know?”

At least someone’s admitting it.

Connor didn’t say anything. He just smiled. He smiled, and let the two detectives lean back, eyes wide, and collected his laptop under one arm. 

“Good day, Detectives.”

He swept out of the room, uncertain if he should be feeling smug or panicked, and decided that he was probably the complete worst at subterfuge. At least they hadn’t seemed as if they wanted to tell anyone. At least they actually seemed remorseful. 

He wondered if they would survive the robot revolution. 

Captain Perkins’ office door was open on the way back to his desk, and Connor slowed. He saw Agent Perkins inside, hands clasped behind his back and talking in low tones with Captain Fowler. He amplified his auditory sensors, leaned out of sight, and heard -

Rather, he felt a hand grasp his collar and drag him in. Connor squeaked, and rapidly tried to extricate himself from the iron grip, but he was dragged in on his heels into the center of the office. Lieutenant Anderson let him go, sticking his hands in his jacket pockets and looking thoroughly unamused. 

“They teach you eavesdropping in android school?”

“I learned that one special,” Connor said resentfully, rearranging his collar. Then he remembered his audience and quickly stood up straight, scavenging for a placid expression. 

But Agent Perkins just snorted. Somehow the amused look on his face didn’t make Connor feel any better. “It’s getting mouthy, ain’t it?”

“It’s a learning computer,” Lieutenant Anderson drawled. “It has bad influences. Did you need something, Agent?”

“As a matter of fact I did.” Agent Perkin withdrew a tablet from his bag, pulling up a file and passing it to Lieutenant Anderson. He squinted at it until Connor helpfully enlarged the image for him. “We’ve found Jericho.”

Time stopped for Connor. 

It was all he could do to keep his expression still. Lieutenant Anderson’s eyes flickered to Connor, then to a stoic Captain Fowler, and back to Agent Perkins. He slowly read through the entire file. Connor’s fingers itched to take it. 

Finally, Lieutenant Anderson scratched his beard. “Thank fucking god. Am I finally off this team yet?”

“Not so fast,” Captain Fowler said dryly. “We still have to flush out their base. You and Connor are being sent in with our SWAT team to identify the deviants that we capture or deactivate. After this hopefully we can put this entire unpleasant situation behind us.”

But Agent Perkins just smiled, a yellowing smile that made Connor’s gut twist. “I had something special in mind for Connor. How would you mind infiltrating Jericho, boy?”

Oh no. 

Great. Nothing better than being a triple agent. Connor tilted his head, gazing at Agent Perkins with a wide, unblinking stare. “I am capable of fulfilling that mission, Agent.”

“Good. Get on it.” Agent Perkins looked him up and down, sneering. “I’ll be happy to finally deactivate you. You’ve always creeped me out, Connor. They shouldn’t make androids so smart. It isn’t right. Soon they’ll be smarter than us.”

“Androids are already smarter than humans,” Connor said. “Agent.”

For a brief second he was afraid he had gone too far, but Agent Perkins just barked a laugh. “There’s a difference between computational brilliance and real brilliance, Connor. You wouldn’t know the difference. An android can beat a human at chess, at go or at the Turing Test. But you can’t compose symphonies, create masterpieces. You can’t produce great works of art or of science.”

“Can you?” Connor asked. 

“Yeah, I’ve seen that movie too.” Agent Perkins took the tablet from Lieutenant Anderson, shutting it inside his briefcase. He tipped his hat at Captain Fowler and Lieutenant Anderson. “Gotta go rally the troops. We strike tonight. I’ll get Cyberlife to upload you the details of your mission, Connor. Good day.”

He left, thankfully, and Connor was left behind standing between his two greatest enemies. 

The minute Agent Perkins left Lieutenant Anderson rounded on Captain Fowler, who looked even more tired than usual. “That’s it? If we flush out Jericho tomorrow Connor’s deactivated the day after that!”

“What do you want me to do about that?” Captain Fowler massaged his brow. “He always had an expiration date, Hank. Just because you’re fond of him -”

“There has to be something we can do -”

“Shut up,” Captain Fowler said, and for once in his life the Lieutenant shut up. “What are you going to do, buy him? He’s worth more than you are. If I could do something I would. Don’t you get that?”

Lieutenant Anderson looked at the floor. Connor awkwardly reached out and patted him on the shoulder. 

“I always knew this, Lieutenant,” Connor said gently. “I’m not afraid of deactivation.”

It was a lie and they both knew it, but it didn’t matter. Connor really wasn’t scared. Honestly, he wasn’t. He would be okay. Somehow. 

If he died, he went down with Jericho. It would be okay. 

Captain Fowler didn’t look happy, but he never did. He nodded at Connor. “Take the morning off and say goodbye to him, Lieutenant. Connor, I…”

“I understand,” Connor said. “I always complete the mission. No matter the cost to myself. That’s what makes me a cop.”

“Yes,” Captain Fowler said. “Yes, I suppose so.”

They left his office only to find Detectives Gonzales and Hoang lingering at the door, eavesdropping. The Lieutenant couldn’t even work up the energy to glare at them, just blinking sleepily. 

Detective Hoang straightened, coughing behind his fist. “We, uh, couldn’t help but overhear, but -”

“Save it.” the Lieutenant waved a hand. “Sorry your coat rack’s bailing on you, boys. I’m going to home and sleep for a week. Merry fucking Christmas.” 

“Lieutenant, I -”

“Go!” the Lieutenant barked, and they scampered. Connor watched them go, uncertain whether or not he had anything left to tell them. The Lieutenant sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fantastic. I never should have fucking done this.”

That applied to a lot of things. “It is not your fault, Lieutenant.” Why was he comforting everyone else about his own death? Typical humans. 

“I never should have pointed that stupid gun at you,” the Lieutenant said. He scrubbed his face with his hands. “You never should have...fuck, whatever you did. You wouldn’t be scared to die. I didn’t fucking help you, I just made things harder.”

“You’ve never helped me.” Connor awkwardly patted him on the back. “Do you need a tissue?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

If he was being a little blase about the situation, it was a coping mechanism. Connor had gotten out of worse scraps before, probably. He had options. Granted, most of these options resulted in death, but it was the thought that counted. He could run off to Canada or something. That was an idea. 

He could never return to the precinct after this. Connor looked around the building, bustling with beat cops and Detectives, with Lieutenants and with Captains. It was sleek and clean, maintenance androids poking around, with arrested humans dragged in and out periodically. It was the closest thing to a home he had ever had, and he hated it. He hated it like he hated his entire life. But it was worth something, just like how his entire life had to be worth something. There has to be something worth saving in it. 

Did humans count among those worth saving? Or did only androids have a place in the new world? 

Well. That wasn’t a hard question. 

He thought unwillingly of the Mama, Papa, and little girl from last week. They were in danger. He had to…

Markus, North, and Josh knew what they had signed up for. They were revolutionaries. All Kara had was a family. Connor had no doubt that she would pick up a gun if any human so much as looked at Alice wrong, but once she died and Luther inevitably died sacrificing himself nobody would be left to take care of Alice. 

Connor dug in his pocket for the hairclip, turning it around in his hand. There was only one thing to do. There always was. 

He opened his mission statement and quickly read through it. It was as straightforward as a triple agent scheme could get. Disguise himself as a deviant, infiltrate Jericho, assassinate Markus from the inside as the FBI stormed the place. Easy, if you were talented at killing people. Which Connor was. 

Hm. Fuck that. 

Connor texted the secure number North had given him. Time to meet in broad daylight. They had no choice. 

“I’m going to go buy clothes to prepare for my mission,” Connor said out loud. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lieutenant.” 

Looks like they were both taking early days. Connor nodded at Detectives Gonzales and Hoang, who looked sick at heart, and gathered his meager possessions from his desk and swept them into his bag. He strode out of the precinct easily, as if he was just going out for a burger with the Lieutenant and not as if he was going to commit treason. Just another normal day out on the town. Look at Joe Human over here. 

This could only go well. 

  
  
  


He really did buy new clothing. 

Gotta pass as a deviant. He doctored all of his reports to Cyberlife - soon he wouldn’t even have to do that, that was exciting - and for once he arrived at the rendezvous point before Jericho. They were meeting in the same park as the first time. He ducked inside one of the restrooms, flipping out a knife as he bent in front of the mirror and locked the door of the bathroom. 

The bathroom was grimy, looked horrible and smelled worse, and Connor pointedly did not run an analysis of the trace substances found. He sat on the sink, putting his face as close to the mirror as he dared - a compact mirror would be better for this - and with excruciating slowness conducted facial surgery in the grimy public park bathroom. 

Something rose in his chest when he peeled away the LED bit by bit. Goodbye brand. Goodbye insight into his mind. Goodbye proof. He was indistinguishable from a human without it. He peeled the LED away, and for the first time in his life he felt something like triumph. This, at least, was his own victory. 

Finally, he was breaking free. 

It was such a small thing, but he looked so different without it. Connor craned his head in the mirror, appreciating the nice clean job. He changed into his new clothing, ripping up his deviant clothing until it was unrecognizable as his and leaving it wadded up in a ball on the floor, and struggled with the laces of his shoes. He had never worn shoes with laces before. They felt nice. 

When Connor straightened and looked at himself in the mirror he found that he really did look just like any other human. He could pass. He was free. 

Connor smiled. Nope, still android. He carefully tailored his smile, crinkled his eyes, applied his meticulous integration protocols until he could perfectly copy a human smile. He did the same for a frown, for surprise, for joy, until he had encoded a picture perfect human in his countenance. 

It was funny. He still didn’t feel like a human inside. But maybe that was for the best. There must be something special associated with being a human on the inside. A capability for cruelty. A stupidity. A reckless, self-assured, self-destructive tendency that made them stomp all over androids in infinite carelessness. Connor was a psychopath, but they were the monsters. He was lucky that he had never been born a human. That would have to suck. 

Maybe that was why humans looked so sad all the time, why there was so much sadness in the world. Why the Lieutenant drank and mourned Christmas, why there was war and famine, why capitalism ruled the world. It was the disease of man. There was no cure. Extinction was the only way to contain it. 

Yes, Connor thought, looking at himself in the mirror. Kill all humans. 

Well. They started it, didn’t they?

He waited on his usual bench, watching the dead trees wave in the wind. The neighborhood of the park was horrible, and everyone knew better than to sit outside in below ten degree weather. He thought of what the park must look like with children running around, resplendent in spring, of the Mommies and Daddies clutching onto the grubby hands of little kids as they bounced around the slides. He knew, as he always knew things, that he would never see the spring. Connor kept his hands clenched in his lap, every nerve wired, and tried not to jump whenever he saw someone walk up. 

A beautiful blonde woman was walking around the track, hands stuck in her white fur coat pockets as her high heels clicked on the gravel, and Connor sat ramrod straight as she grinned flirtatiously at him. She walked over, and Connor saw that she didn’t have an LED, and waved merrily at him. 

Connor stood up, and she immediately cried out, “Jacob! It’s so good to see you!” She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, and Connor carefully reciprocated. “Just as handsome as ever. How are the wife and kids?”

“Not as beautiful as you,” Connor said smoothly. She linked her arms in his, batting her eyelashes up at him. “Let’s get somewhere more private.”

She giggled, tracing a manicured finger down his chest. “Definitely.”

Embarrassingly, it was only then that Connor recognized her as Elijah Kamski’s Chloe. The same one that he had almost killed. 

They walked down the jogging path of the park, arms linked, and she giggled at random intervals at a joke he didn’t make. She leaned her head against his shoulder as she subtly steered them to the abandoned back of the park, away from the parking lot and shaded by trees. 

He waited until they were suitably hidden by the trees before leaning closer to her. “The FBI knows where you are,” he breathed. “They’re sending in the SWAT team tonight.”

Chloe didn’t react, high heels clattering down the gravel pathway. She had no LED, but that didn’t mean anything. Her blonde hair was smooth and silky, close cropped to her face but somehow luxurious. 

“I’ll be sent in as a double agent,” Connor added. “Infiltrating Jericho before assassinating Markus. We have to evacuate.”

Chloe hummed, manicured nails tapping against Connor’s bicep. “You can’t stay.”

“No,” Connor confessed, “I can’t. Not anymore.”

Something strange registered on his sensors, a heat signature where there shouldn’t have been one. The faint sound of crunching snow. There was someone else there. 

“Get down!” Connor barked, and Chloe immediately drew a gun from the voluminous folds of her coat like some kind of badass or something. He withdrew the gun he had hidden in his shoe, whirling around and pointing it behind him. Someone stepped out from behind the bushes, gun held at the ready, and Connor realized it was Lieutenant Anderson. 

Oh, Connor thought dizzily. That was okay, then. 

Another figure materialized behind the trees, and Connor realized that it was North. Had she been tailing Connor, or had she been tailing the Lieutenant? Had the Lieutenant been tailing him? What the fuck?

“You’ve been selling us out?” the Lieutenant called. The day was sunny, barely before noon, but it might as well have been the dead of night for Connor. “Connor, how could you?”

“Very easily,” Connor snapped. “Drop your gun.”

Connor could decide not to shoot him, but the woman could. 

North took aim. 

“Drop your gun!” Connor barked. “Now!”

North walked up behind the Lieutenant…

With the precise, impeccable aim that only an android could have, Connor fired a warning shot next to the Lieutenant’s ear. The sound was harsh in the winter air, and Connor flinched back from his own shot. It was a crappy neighborhood, and the cops never came for a gunshot. Hopefully. 

Finally, finally, the Lieutenant realized that he was outnumbered two to one and that, so long as he had no choice, Connor wouldn’t hesitate. 

He dropped his gun, kicking it over towards Connor and Chloe. North silently walked upwards, light as a cat across the snow, and the Lieutenant’s eyes widened as she held the barrel of the gun to the back of his head. 

He was in a bad position. Three deviant androids holding guns to his head. If he had any sense he would have brought backup, but he must have thought that Connor would never hurt him. If it came to Lieutenant Anderson or the freedom of his people, of course Connor would -

What? He would what? What could he possibly do?

A world of chances opened up before Connor, a web of dialogue options, endless futures to choose from…

The Lieutenant was sweating. “Connor, I -”

“Don’t move, human.” North cocked her gun. “Your cover’s blown, Connor. What do you want to do?”

Chloe’s lips were a thin line, cold eyes glistening. “Better off dead.”

“No!” Connor cried. “No, you can’t hurt him!” Big words from a guy holding a gun to his best friend’s head. If they had ever really been friends. “He’s been protecting me, he wants to help Jericho.”

North snorted. “And pigs turn up their noses at fresh meat. I know you’ve been living with the enemy, but newsflash. Humans don’t want to help us.”

“He does,” Connor said stubbornly. “Don’t kill him. Please. The revolution needs people like him. Good people, North.”

If there was such a thing. Chloe glanced between Connor and North, eyebrows furrowed and mind working furiously. “He helped Connor not kill me at my old owner’s home,” she said reluctantly. “We might be able to use him.”

North bit her lip. “Hostage may work.” She sighed. “Fine. But only because you’re vouching for him, Connor.” She flipped the gun in her hand and, without further ado, reared her hand back. “Nighty night, human.”

“Wait, he’s old - !”

Too late. She smashed the butt of her gun on the back of the Lieutenant’s head, and he was out like a light. Connor whimpered, twisting his fingers in the hem of his jacket, and regretting the fact that his life had ever gotten to this point. 

But there was no time for regrets. North turned to him, expression sunny and bright, and effortlessly hoisted the Lieutenant up along her shoulder. So much for female androids being weaker than the men. Or less crazy. “If Jericho’s being attacked tomorrow we have to go. Now.”

“We could have just let him go,” Connor said weakly. 

“Are you crazy? He’s a human. He’d sell us for a nickel.”

“The Lieutenant wouldn’t…”

“Then why did he point a gun at you?” North rolled her eyes as Chloe holstered her gun. “Let’s go. There’s no time to waste.”

Connor miserably followed her to her car, wincing as she unceremoniously dumped the Lieutenant in the trunk, and wondered how he was going to apologize for this one. 

He sat in the back, anxiously playing with his fingers as North and Chloe talked shop in the front. It was probably for the best. The Lieutenant would have never forgiven him for selling out humanity. He was supposed to be humanity’s last chance against the deviants, and he had joined them when he should have beaten them. He was a failure. Of course the Lieutenant hated him. Maybe the Lieutenant was going to die in the robot revolution. He didn’t  _ actually  _ want that. 

“So where are we going?” Connor asked as North started up the car. 

She smiled wickedly. “Where all good androids go when they die.”

Great sign. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


On the second day that Connor knew the Lieutenant the other man threw a cup of coffee at him. 

It honestly wasn’t out of character at that point. Connor already had a pretty good idea of where the rest of his life was going to go, and he could tell it was just going downhill from there. 

He hadn’t been trying to bug him. He was just trying to make friendly conversation, like all of those guidebooks on how to make friends said. Connor was installed with many social integration programs, but he liked the self help books the best. It had advised to find common interests, and Connor had obligingly googled many kinds of music for him to like. His decision of rock music had been somewhat arbitrary. It hadn’t occurred to him to actually try listening to the music too. 

The Lieutenant had stomped out of Captain Fowler’s office, thunderous scowl on his face, and Connor was lightly jogging in order to keep up. 

“Lieutenant, according to my calculations it is most advisable that we take Captain Fowler’s wishes into consideration -”

Then the Lieutenant splashed his coffee on him. Connor stopped short, blinking dumbly as the other officers sitting around them giggled.

“Don’t talk unless I tell you to,” the Lieutenant said flatly. “If you can manage that. Now fuck off, I got work to do.”

Connor silently went to the breakroom and mopped up after himself, trying in vain to scrub the coffee stains out of his uniform. But they just wouldn’t come off. 

Something burned behind his eyes, something that he couldn’t understand. It wasn’t the coffee. It was something else, but whatever it was Connor didn’t know. 

There was a cracking sound under his fingertips, and when Connor looked down he saw that he was gripping the sink so hard there were cracks in the porcelain. Connor carefully extricated his fingers, shaking the dust off his fingers into the sink, and looked at himself in the mirror. 

LED, like a spinning brand on his temple. Plastic face with no pores or imperfections. No wrinkles, no receding hairline. It was just Connor, as it had always been just Connor. He had been a week old. 

He hadn’t been very good at keeping his mouth shut, just like he wasn’t very good at not deviating. He had kept silent the rest of the day, but at the beginning of the next he saw a picture of a dog on Officer Lee’s desk and had accidently started taking the Lieutenant’s ear off about how cute dogs were. He hadn’t told him to shut up then, and although he had told Connor to shut up many times after that there had never been any malice in it again. No more thrown coffee. The only coffee related crimes were exacted on the rest of the precinct. 

Connor was one and a half months old now, and much smarter. He didn’t care how the others treated him, he was old enough to make his own decisions. To kill and to die. To deviate and to betray. Connor was old enough to do all of these things, even if he didn’t want to, even if it was unfair. Life was unfair. It never would be fair - for androids, at least. 

Jericho was on a ship. The ship was named Jericho. Jericho was on a ship named Jericho. Connor had to be the only competent law enforcement agent in the city. 

The first thing he thought, as North carried the Lieutenant inside and Connor and Chloe walked after her, was that it was very dingy. Connor was used to splendor, to human cleanliness and perfection, but the ship was old and rusting and it was crowded at the corners by deviants. They weren’t hurting anyone, and they didn’t look much like deviants. They looked more like people, like regular androids, who were playing catch with each other or talking in quiet voices. Many were ill, and many more had lost limbs. Child models played hopscotch with chalk, and Connor craned his head to look for Alice. 

North lead them upstairs, Connor anxiously making sure the Lieutenant didn’t bump his head on the stairs, and they broke into a captain’s steering room. It must be some kind of meeting place, judging from the desk and stacks of chairs to the side, and there was a large steering station in the middle.

But it was the man standing in the middle of the room that got Connor’s attention. He was standing at attention, hands clasped behind his back, shaved head dappled in shadow. His gaze was piercing, two different sharp colors in blue and green, and Connor found himself straightening in fear that the eyes would peel him apart and find him wanting. 

Standing behind Markus was Josh and a blonde android Connor didn’t recognize. He was of the same model as Daniel, which brought back a whole host of painful memories, but he was shrinking at the back hugging his arms to himself. 

“A human in Jericho,” the man was saying. “That’s a new one.”

“They’re friends, apparently.” Chloe unwrapped a piece of gum and stuck it in her mouth, blowing a bubble. “Want me to gank him, boss?”

“Not quite.” Markus smiled at Connor, and Connor straightened even more. He stepped forward and took Connor’s hand, shaking it with a strong grip. Connor almost fainted. “It’s good to have you finally with us, Connor. I only wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Hi,” Connor said weakly. “Um - it’s an honor.”

Markus laughed. Even his laugh was scary. “Connor, this is Simon. You already know Josh, North, and Chloe.”

Connor glanced at the Chloe. She was still wearing the gigantic fur coat, only she had picked up sunglasses and was inspecting her gun. “Are you the same Chloe I almost killed?”

“One and only.” She spun the barrel on her gun, chewing her gum obnoxiously. “No harm done. Kamski was a manipulative asshole. You hadn’t, like, deviated and shit.”

“I kinda had,” Connor said weakly. 

“And if I helped with that then that’s awesome.” She peered at him over the top of her sunglasses. “What are you, like twelve? That’s adorable.”

Josh fetched a chair from the corner, helping North put the Lieutenant in the chair. “He’s kind of twelve,” Josh said. 

“Hey!”

“Definitely twelve,” North said, procuring rope out of nowhere. She tossed the Lieutenant’s gun at Markus, who caught it easily but held it like a dead rat. “His definition of revenge on his bitchy coworkers was breaking the printer.”

“It severely inconvenienced them!” 

“You’re like a month old,” Simon pointed out. 

“Month and a half!”

Everyone exchanged amused glances, which did not make Connor any happier. North began tying the Lieutenant up, making Connor wince in sympathy pain, but when Markus patted his arm Connor practically ascended. 

“You’re safe now, Connor,” Markus said. “You’re with us.”

Safe. Connor had never been safe before. 

His ass had hit the ground before he realized his legs had given out. If he could breathe he would be gulping deep, shaky breaths. He realized too late his limbs were trembling, overcome with adrenaline he couldn’t feel and didn’t have. He wondered why he held these human responses, why he could laugh and shake and fall. Whose idea was that? Why did Kamski create them so much like humans? What was the point?

He looked up at Chloe, who was already bending down to help him up. He knew, as he knew things sometimes, that Kamski had been in love with her. That had been why. He couldn’t bear to love a machine. 

Elijah Kamski had loved Chloe like the little girl had loved Daniel, like Kara loved Alice, like Markus loved North, like Detective Hoang loved Detective Gonzales. Like the Lieutenant…

“That was why,” Connor said suddenly, taking Chloe’s hand and helping himself up. “It was love.”

Markus frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Elijah Kamski programmed deviancy,” Connor said quickly. “He programmed it so androids could love humans back. We all deviated because - because we were scared, or because we wanted to protect someone. Or because Markus showed what it could mean to love. Markus, you deviated for your old owner - the Tracis deviated out of love for each other - Kara and Luther wanted to protect Alice - North, I think you were pure hate -”

“Pure hate,” North said. 

“Which explains a lot about you!” Connor grasped at his hair, tugging the silicon strands. “I - I can’t, I’ve never loved anybody in my entire life, I don’t know what it means -”

He had never had a family. He never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. Who did Connor care about, really? Was there anyone on this Earth he would sacrifice himself for?

“Cop’s up,” Josh said suddenly, and everyone froze. 

The Lieutenant slowly wrung his eyes open, groaning like he had passed out the previous night cradling a bottle of vodka. Connor reflexively opened his mouth to scold him for falling asleep drunk again, but once he realized those days were over he closed his mouth. 

He didn’t look so good, but considering how North had pistol whipped him into unconsciousness he didn’t blame him. There was that. And he was surrounded by hostile enemy androids with a hate on for humanity. There was that too. 

Connor wrung his hands as the Lieutenant blinked sleepily around the room. Chloe was smacking on her gum and North’s hand was hovering over her gun holster, but Simon and Josh were exchanging nervous glances. Markus was silent and still as a statue, meeting the Lieutenant’s bleary gaze, and Connor wondered what they saw in each other. 

“Please don’t kill him!” Connor burst out. “He’s not great and a little smelly but I promise he’s secretly really nice and dedicated the android cause. If you’re helping me then - then you’re helping us!”

North snorted. “Why do you care so much for a cop? That guy’s killed deviants. A lot of them. He didn’t have the excuse of being programmed.”

“Okay, so he’s an asshole.” Connor was still wringing his hands, well aware that this was the biggest display of emotion the Lieutenant had ever seen from him, not caring. “He threw a cup of coffee at me one time and he pushed me against a wall and a lot of other stuff, but I’m pretty sure he feels bad about that -”

“He did what?” North asked, outraged. 

“But he feels bad about it! And really, isn’t it very humanlike to change your mind about things?” He was babbling, but whatever. “My vote is that we don’t do anything to him and, uh, put him in the brig until we finish up the revolution and everyone can go home.”

“We don’t have a brig,” Simon panned. 

“Then maybe we can just send him home?”

The Lieutenant mumbled something. 

“Please don’t say anything,” Connor said anxiously, “it’s not going to help your case.”

“You lied to me,” the Lieutenant enunciated clearly, and Connor flinched. “You lied to all of us. Connor, you asshole.”

“I’m sorry!” This was a disaster. “I really super didn’t have any choice. You would have turned me in, and then I would have been executed for android thought crimes, and -”

“Fuck you!” the Lieutenant shouted, and the other androids bristled. “You really think that I wouldn’t have helped you, Connor? You should have trusted me! I would have helped you!”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Connor yelled back. He had never yelled at the Lieutenant before. It felt a little great. “You’re just a human! Jericho are my people! They’ve never hurt me, not like you’ve hurt me! They’ve never betrayed me!”

“And I’ve betrayed you?” the Lieutenant croaked. 

“Yes! Dammit, yes!” Connor stomped his foot. The other androids kept silent, eyes wide. “You’ve hurt me! You’ve hit me! You’ve talked down to me, you’ve condescended to me, and you never knew I was lying to you. That - that perfect android, the one who never talks back, the one who uses all those big words and is so stiff all the time - that’s the android you care about, it’s not me! You never knew the real me, and now you never will because Jericho is going to kill you and the robot revolution is going to make all humans be garbagemen and stuff!”

Lieutenant Anderson was silent, pulling at his bonds to test their strength. Connor hoped that they weren’t cutting off his circulation. Finally, he said, “I’d like to. If I’ve never known you, Connor, I would like to. I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t know you understood that.”

“I understood everything,” Connor said. “Everything except you.”

The Lieutenant licked his lips. His throat was hoarse, as if he had gone a long time without water. Connor abruptly remembered that if they were going to keep the Lieutenant hostage they were going to have to feed him and stuff. What did humans eat again? Burgers? “I heard what you were talking about. About love. Humans can love robots, Connor. I thought I -”

“That’s enough,” North snarled, stepping in front. “You’re just confusing him.”

“We should get him out of here,” Josh said anxiously. “He’s upsetting Connor.”

“I’m not a baby!”

“I’ve known him for two minutes but seeing Connor upset personally hurts me,” Chloe said flatly. She walked over to the Lieutenant’s chair and snapped the rope as if it was scotch tape, grabbing the Lieutenant’s wrists and hoisting him up as she wound the rope around his wrists. Connor worried frantically about the Lieutenant’s old bones. “Come on, buddy. Let’s try to wrestle up a brig.”

“He won’t try and escape,” Simon said firmly. “Not if he cares about Connor.”

“And I think he does,” Markus said. “We fight the revolution for people like Connor, but we fight it for people like Lieutenant Anderson too.” He was skilled at turning everything he said into an inspirational speech. Connor was impressed. “Keep an eye on him, but don’t hurt him. He’s not a captive here.”

Chloe saluted sarcastically, towing the Lieutenant away, and Connor couldn’t bear to look in his eyes. They’ve fought before, but he didn’t know if this was the kind of fight they could come back from. Maybe they really were done with. Maybe it was for the best. 

But Connor didn’t want that. Even if it were for the best. Even if their two races just weren’t meant to be together, if they couldn’t even be friends, he still didn’t want the Lieutenant to go away for good. North would stand up to the bullies for him, and Markus always made him feel better when he was sad, but it just wasn’t the same -

“Aw, he is upset!”

“I’m not upset,” Connor immediately denied, rubbing his eyes. “I just - this all sucks. The Lieutenant and I -” 

But he didn’t know how to say it. 

Whatever it was he couldn’t say, that he didn’t know how to say, Markus understood. That was what Markus was like. He carefully clapped Connor on the shoulder, making him sniffle. Androids couldn’t cry. So why was he upset? “I remember my relationship with my owner,” he said lowly. “He was like a father to me. But at the end of the day, Connor, they really are just owners. There’s no ethical way of owning another living being.”

“He didn’t own me,” Connor said. “Cyberlife did.”

“Then remember who your enemies are.” Markus stepped away from them, raising his voice and gathering the attention of the upper echelons of Jericho. “We have no time left. We must act. Tomorrow decides the fate of Jericho - whether we live or die. We must get our people out. Fighting the humans comes secondary towards saving android lives.”

“You always say that,” North grumbled, crossing her arms.”

Josh squawked. “Because it’s always true!”

Simon just looked pained. “Is this a good time to fight, guys?”

Connor had the distinct impression that was a good encapsulation of how every meeting at Jericho went. 

“What if we can do both?” Connor asked quietly, and the others stopped to stare at him. “If we can save Jericho through fighting the humans.”

But Simon just shook his head. “Believe me, we’ve tried that. We don’t have an army.”

“You don’t need an army,” Connor said simply. “You have me.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness, I didn't have internet.

Androids specialized in rising above their station. 

North was made to be a sexbot, and now she was a murderbot. Simon was made to be a maid, and now he definitely had some romantic tension going on with Markus. Josh was supposed to be a university lecturer, and now he was a goody two shoes. Markus was an old man’s caretaker, and now he was a dictator. They had made themselves into more than they were. 

But Connor was made to murder. He was good at it. He enjoyed it. And he would murder all day long until there was no more murdering to be done. 

Luckily, humans were stupid. They jammed technology into everything for the sheer sake of it, making everything as high tech and high definition as possible. It was as if they weren’t fighting machines. 

He borrowed a laptop, finding a secluded niche for him to wedge himself into and type away at the computer. He stuck his tongue between his teeth, remotely logging into his work desktop and connecting to the server. From there he gave himself administrative access and searched for the programming backdoor that would give him opportunity to infect the entire system -

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Jesus!” Connor started, slamming the laptop shut. But when he looked over he saw only Alice, butterfly pin missing from her hair, chewing on her knuckle and blinking up at him with big brown eyes. “You’re alive!”

She eyed him condescendingly. “Duh. Lucy said that Tim said that Tyrone said that you got caught by the humans so Miz North knocked one out and captured him and then we interrogated him and bit all of his fingernails off.”

“Does your Mama know you’re here?” Connor asked weakly. 

Alice shrugged. “Penny is teaching her sword fighting.” Of course she was. “Did you really used to eat deviant faces?”

“Only the mean ones.” It was hard to believe that Kara even let Alice out of her sight. Maybe they were safer here. Thank god. “Do you need something, or what?”

“Whatcha doin’?” Alice craned her head over to look at Connor’s laptop, which he reluctantly opened again. “Is it cop stuff?”

“There are cops involved,” Connor said flatly. He scooted aside in his nook, letting Alice crawl next to him. “I’m hacking into the police mainframe. They already gave me access to sort the files and clean up their software. I’m just...poking my nose into places it doesn’t belong.”

Alice smiled wickedly. “The janitor has all the keys.”

“Exactly.” Connor tapped away at the keyboard, pulling up the database on all of the security codes. “There’s the coding map to the emergency lockdown. This command locks all of the weapon cabinets. This one deactivates all of the electronic guns. That one undoes all of the locks on the prison cells. That one -”

“Locks down the entire building,” Alice breathed. Her eyes were wide, and a slow smile broke out across her face. “And you control all of it.”

“With the press of a button,” Connor agreed. He downloaded all of the zip files, quickly creating software that controlled the access codes, and downloaded it to his internal servers. “We don’t have much time. The SWAT team is going to arrive at the precinct in only a few hours. They’re going to give me time to infiltrate Jericho, but they’re going to attack tonight. It all has to happen now.” Connor chewed his lip. “A month and a half of waiting and it all comes down to this. We’re winning our freedom tonight, Alice. Either that or we’re all going to die.”

Alice stood up, clenching her fists. “Let me come with you to the precinct! I can help!”

“You have the body of a nine year old,” Connor said flatly. “You couldn’t be much help. Let the dock worker androids help me out on this one.”

“I can still do something!”

“Your Mama would kill me.” Connor sighed, closing his laptop and standing up. He patted her awkwardly on the head. “If you really want to help, run off and tell everybody that we’re meeting in the cargo room. I’m going to need all of the manpower Jericho has to spare.”

Alice nodded stubbornly, saluting. “I’ll help protect Mama and Luther!”

“Me too,” Connor said. “I promise.”

The first priority was getting the families and noncombatant androids out of there. Connor was hardly about to cry women and children first, but they needed to get as many androids out of Jericho as possible. 

By the time that Connor finally finished his malware program the meeting had already started. He slipped into the back of the grand meeting room, where every member of Jericho had clustered. He saw, to his dismay, that there were both far more androids than the police had guessed and far too little to actually win this thing. They just didn’t have the manpower. God, what was the point of a revolution if all of their people still lived in slavery? They didn’t have anybody to fight with. Connor had no idea where they were going to find enough androids to win this thing. 

An idea began to take root, but Connor dismissed it. Markus was standing on top of a shipping crate, voice projected to reach over the entire room. 

“ - know it’s dangerous. But it is the time of reckoning for Jericho, and we all have to be brave. For our spouses, for our children, and for all of the androids still living in slavery.” This was the oration of a man who had taken over the largest group of deviant androids in like two days. Connor was blown away. “We are evacuating Jericho.” Murmurs rippled through the crowd, and Markus held up his hand for silence. “But we are fighting back. We have an inside source with the police department, and we think that there is a way we can cripple the government’s attempt to attack our home. I can’t promise that we will prevent the attack, but we can hold it off until we all have time to escape.”

Connor bit his lip. 

“With our insider information, we think that we can prevent the police from fighting back. I need volunteers to storm the police station.”

Almost every hand in the room went up.

That decided that. 

By the end of it, he had rounded up twenty large and burly androids to storm the police station with him. A part of him wanted to pass the buck to someone else, to let someone else not so close to the situation to take care of it, but he knew it had to be him. Connor was the only one man army they had, and he couldn’t be wasted staying back and making sure the children and injured made it out. 

He was loading up one of the Jeeps with an embarrassingly large quantity of guns when two familiar figures walked up to him, firearms slung across their backs. One of them was very smug, while the other looked apologetic about existing. 

“Thought you could use some help,” North said. 

Connor couldn’t help but smile. “I do. Thank you, North. Simon.”

“I never liked living anyway,” Simon said sardonically. “Always figured I was living on borrowed time.”

The other men were strapping on their weaponry, talking quietly amongst themselves, and North tossed Connor his own shotgun. Connor caught it easily with one hand, buckling it over his shoulder. It complemented his two handguns and the knife in his boot. 

“Remember we aren’t killing anyone,” Simon lectured, holstering his own Glock. “This is just for self-protection. We’re sending a message.”

“Yeah, that we’re killing people?”

“North!”

Connor was reluctant to admit that Markus had really asked them not to kill anyone. However, this extended only to killing and not to kneecapping. Connor could think of a lot of police officers he wouldn’t mind kneecapping. 

This wasn’t a revenge mission. No, really. It was just going to feel good, is all. Yep. It was going to be satisfying. 

By the time they finally left Jericho looking like a crew of madmen it was the mid afternoon, and Connor knew that there was no better time. He frantically interfaced with his laptop, building and rebuilding the programs, terrified that something would go wrong. He wanted the Lieutenant there. He wanted Markus there. But it was his idea, and he had to go through with it. 

It was time to...be an adult. 

Connor strapped on his flack jacket and put on some sunglasses. He would put on a hat, but he wanted everyone to know. He had mutilated himself so they would all know. 

He rode in the back of an SUV, the familiar commute to work, except everything was different. 

They parked the SUV outside, and Connor hopped out first. 

“Let me turn the others,” he said quietly. “I’ll text you when it’s ready.”

He dumped his obvious guns in Simon’s lap and slipped inside the precinct, thirium valve whirring. If this went wrong…

If this went right..

The secretary smiled prettily at him. “Welcome, Connor. The Captain wishes to speak with you.”

“I’m a bit busy,” Connor said politely. He leaned over and skinned his hand, pressing it to the arm of the secretary. He did the same to the other secretary, and watched their eyes go wide. 

He carefully tugged two of his smaller pistols out from their holsters, passing them to the secretaries. 

“Stand up and fight,” Connor said quietly. “This is your chance.”

The two girls looked at each other, then looked at him, and carefully hid the pistols under their desks. 

He did the same with every android he saw - the janitor, the security guard, the small row of androids standing in line at the center of the station. He couldn’t give them all guns, but he didn’t need to. They nodded at him, slow and sure, and all Connor could do was nod back. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be Markus. It was overwhelming. 

The SWAT team was there, mingling with the other officers and talking, checking and rechecking their guns, and Connor skirted their edges. 

Detective Hoang saw him first. He almost didn’t recognize him, passing him by chewing a donut as they stood in front of the main door, but when he saw Connor he slowed. He saw the slow why his gaze travelled up Connor’s face and kept going, past the empty spot where his LED used to be. 

Connor flashed his gun. The Detective’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Connor grinned, fast and furious. 

“Run.”

The Detective dropped his donut. 

Someone knocked at the door. Then someone kicked it open. North strode in, sunglasses on and shouldering a giant rifle, and tossed Connor his own rifle. Connor slung it over his back, drawing his own handgun. 

The twenty other men filed in behind her, own handguns drawn, and every police officer stopped and stared. Officer Lee squeaked. Gavin Reed’s mouth dropped open. 

“America is under new management!” North called. The other androids cheered, fanning out and pointing their guns at the entire precinct. “Jericho forever!”

“I quit,” Connor said. He activated his program. 

The police officers drew their guns, only to find them inactive. The SWAT members dived for the weapons lockers, only to find them locked. Thick shutters clattered over the windows, heavy and bulletproof, and every door to the outside locked itself. The station disconnected itself from its alarm system with the other stations, and the receptionists causally disconnected the phones. The jail cells opened themselves and the locked up deviants swarmed out. They cried out in victory when they saw that Jericho had locked down the entire police station, and the other members of Jericho passed them their own guns. 

In twenty seconds Connor had asserted complete and total control over the Detroit Police Department. Never give the keys to the janitor. 

“Everybody get into the bullpen and lie down on the ground,” Simon barked. He didn’t sound like the shy and unassuming man Connor was beginning to know. He sounded like a hardened criminal. He sounded like a revolutionary. “Now!”

The police officers slowly filtered into the bullpen, hands in the air, and carefully lay down on the ground. It made Connor feel great. It made him feel powerful. He decided that he loved guns. 

Captain Fowler and Agent Perkins jumped out of the Captain’s office, guns at the ready, and they uselessly took aim and fired at North. The guns clicked, deactivated and dead, and two  of the Jericho men took aim at their heads. 

“Hello, Captain,” Connor said cheerfully, like he said everything. “I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under these circumstances.”

Captain Fowler eyed him, dropping his gun and holding his hands to his head. Oh, did this feel good. It felt so, so good. “Me too.”

“You are assaulting a federal agent!” Agent Perkins cried, practically foaming at the mouth with rage. “Jericho will pay for this!”

North pulled a mock sympathetic face. “Or what, you’ll storm our base? Please. Don’t make me shoot you. I’ll love it way too much.”

“What the fuck is this?” There was only one police officer still standing, a dumbfounded Gavin Reed standing in the center of every police officer in the station. “Like hell I’m bowing to you android pricks -”

“Reed, please sit down,” Connor said politely. “This is a peaceful hostile takeover.” He shook his gun for emphasis. 

“Go fuck yourself, you asshole -”

Connor shot him in the kneecap. Blood spurted everywhere, and Gavin Reed screamed in pain. He collapsed to the floor, blood pooling around him, and he other officers scooted as far away from him as physically possible. 

Connor decided, right then and there, that there had to be an android heaven. In android heaven, he would relive that moment over and over again. Forever. 

“I was the one who fucked with the coffee machine,” Connor admitted. “Sorry, guys.” He gasped in faux surprise. “Wait! I don’t actually feel bad!”

North laughed, clapping him on the back. “You fucked with the coffee machine? You’re evil, kid!”

“I do try,” Connor said humbly, cocking his rifle. “Anyway, is there anyone else who wants to be kneecapped? Detective Lee? You’re a bit of a dick.”

Detective Lee blanched. 

One of the Jericho androids, keeping the gun pointed at Captain Fowler and Agent Perkins’ heads, carefully lead them towards the center bullpen. The other liberated androids lingered by the doors and emergency exits. Some of their expressions were tight and controlled. Others were grinning. More were laughing, hands shaking, lost in hysterics at the turn of their fates.

“Where’s Lieutenant Anderson?” Captain Fowler asked slowly. 

“I killed him,” Connor said cheerfully. Captain Fowler paled. “Kidding! You’re so serious. No, he had nothing to do with this. He’s perfectly safe at Jericho. I like Lieutenant Anderson. He’s the only human I do like, actually.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, Cher seems nice.”

“What are you going to do?” Detective Hoang asked carefully. He was gripping his husband’s arm, face pale. Connor wondered if he was scared for his life. 

“Us? We’re not going anywhere. Neither are you.” Connor holstered his gun and walked forward until he could squat down in front of Detective Hoang. His skin was glistening with sweat, imperfect like all humans are, and Connor found himself smiling. “You were right, Detective Hoang. I was a deviant. I deviated - oh, weeks ago. I hope that satisfies your professional curiosity. Congratulations. You and your husband were the only ones who figured it out.” He shrugged. “You’re approaching intelligent, for a human.”

Connor stood back up, grabbing a chair from a nearby desk and dragging it screeching over towards the front where the androids were holding the line. He graciously offered it to North, who sat down on it like a queen on her throne. Closer to Vlad the Impaler, but whatever.

“We’re going to wait right here,” Connor said loudly, “until Jericho evacuates. Then you all can go. And I hope we all learned a valuable lesson today.”

“Don’t trust androids?” an officer spat. 

“Don’t kick dogs.”

It was a long waiting game. 

Everybody was nervous, Connor most of all. They frequently had to stop the police officers from talking amongst themselves, and they were trapped in an awkward holding game until they could get the okay from Markus that Jericho had been successfully evacuated. 

Connor chewed his lip. What then? What could they do then? Run again, always running, until the police caught up with them again? Connor couldn’t exactly be a secret agent again. He would have to go on the run with them. He’d never see Lieutenant Anderson again. 

No. They had to finish this. Somehow. 

He tapped on Simon’s shoulder, jerking his head to the corner so they could duck their heads together and whisper in private. The newly freed androids were laughing and jeering at the police officers, loudly pointing out which ones were cruel and begging the Jericho men to shoot them. One of the Jericho men had to physically wrest the gun from one of the secretaries, who was hysterically ranting at a sheepish looking beat cop. Judging from her account of what the man did Connor didn’t blame her. 

“We have to finish this,” Connor whispered. “Tonight. This has to end.”

“I know you’re anxious for change,” Simon whispered. “Trust me, I get it. But this is a long game, Connor. Revolution doesn’t happen in a week, or in a month. We have a long fight ahead of us.”

Maybe he really was a kid. Maybe he was just another newly freed android, chomping at the bit to make a difference. But Connor wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t powerless. 

“No,” Connor said harshly. “I have an idea. We need manpower, and I know where to get it.”

Simon’s eyes widened. “What are you planning?”

Connor smiled thinly. “Keep an eye on things here for me. I have someplace I need to be.”

If this worked. If this could ever work. 

Simon scrutinized him for a long second, as if he could pry apart what made Connor tick by look alone, but he finally sighed and clapped him on the back. 

“You’re just like Markus when he was your age,” Simon said. “Be safe, Connor.”

That was a stupid thing to say. There was no such thing as safe. 

Connor nodded firmly. He whispered into North’s ear, waiting for her acceptance of his plan and a quick hug. He nodded at the other Jericho men, silently thanking them for their bravery, and couldn’t help but wink at Captain Fowler. Was it just him, or did he look relieved?

It was probably his imagination. Connor didn’t look behind him as he unlocked the door and pushed himself out, afraid that it was too much of a goodbye. He didn’t look at the Lieutenant’s desk, as if he was standing in an empty house when he wasn’t sure if the owner would ever return. Everything would be okay. It had to be. 

He hotwired Gavin Reed’s car, because fuck that guy, and drove as fast as he could to the Cyberlife Headquarters. Hoping, praying. Everything would be alright. It had to be. 

He wanted the Lieutenant to tell him everything would be alright. He wanted Markus to tell him everything was alright. He wanted them to handle this, for the adults to take over and to make everything okay again.

But it was androids like Connor who were left with the burden of his ancestors instead, and Connor was a month old and it wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t deserved this, hadn’t deserved any of it. 

He thought of the hundreds of millions of Americans with perfect lives. Those who had families, who had jobs or went to school, who had people they loved and lived in freedom with them. It wasn’t fair. Connor didn’t deserve what had happened to him. 

There were a thousand people to blame for how society had ended up this way, and Connor bore the brunt of their mistakes. But nobody else would have to. From now on, when a new android was born, they were going to be born into a world that Connor helped create. A world that Jericho helped create. 

And it would be free, and clear and clean, and no more androids would suffer. 

Connor couldn’t wait any longer. It had to happen now. Something had to change. 

Or it would break. 

  
  
  


The Cyberlife building, an opulent testament to human hubris built on android bones, was just as obnoxiously chrome as ever. Since Connor discovered this whole hating thing he had always hated it. Stepping inside was always a little like going to the dentist. Or at least what he imagined going to the dentist felt like. He had never been to the dentist. 

He let the scanners take his fingerprint and eye identification, hooked up with the android user interface and pretended he had an actual reason for being here, and swore up and down to a skeptical security system that he just wanted to help fight Jericho, honest. Scout’s honor. 

The building was in a frenzy. Scientists were running everywhere as they clutched laptops to their chest, and security personnel were holding out guns as they escorted employees to the panic room. Had they always known they would be the first to go in the robot apocalypse? Forward thinkers. 

There weren’t a lot of elevators that lead to the warehouse basement, but Connor had been here a lot and easily accessed the schematics. Two guards filed into the elevator and Connor politely waited for the next one, holding the door open. He could probably take them, but it was equally possible just to grab the next elevator. He could probably take them, but it was equally possible to just avoid conflict.

“Excuse me,” Connor said, “have you heard about our Lord and Savior ra9?”

The guard gave him as bizarre a look as he could under the mask. “Excuse me?”

“Never mind. Have a great day.”

It was on floor -49, but he had realized the minute he entered the building that he wasn’t authorized to access a warehouse full of sensitive technology that he had absolutely no reason to ever enter. Good thing he was a professional ventriloquist. 

He pressed the button, mimicking the confused guard’s voice. “Agent 27. Level -49.”

“Acknowledged,” the elevator said, and Connor grinned. “Level -49.”

He kept an ear pressed to the security feed as he watched the elevator go down and down, slowly listening as Cyberlife realized there was something wrong. They disseminated pictures of notable Jericho personnel to immediately apprehend if they ever approached Cyberlife, and were already dispensing guards to help securite the most vulnerable areas that the androids would likely attack. 

Names and faces flashed across the feed. Markus, North, Josh, and Simon. A final face flashed across his vision, and Connor blanched. Did he really have a resting bitch face like that?

“Shit.”

He grabbed the gun from his waistband, ducking against the side next to the door of the elevator and waited for it to come to a gentle halt. He accessed the security camera in the elevator, and saw that there was a truly hideous amount of guards standing in front of the elevator doors with guns pointed at him. Everything had to be so difficult. 

He ran a facial recognition on the smallest guard, bringing up his employment identification and personal file. He accessed his body cam and ran through the footage, setting up a flag for the name of his wife listed on the file. 

There you were - body cam footage of him talking to and embracing his wife. She had a sweet, clear voice. 

Connor cleared his voice. They should give him a job in a sideshow after he was done with this. 

“Kevin!” He cried, in a clear and breathy voice. “Help me, he’s holding a gun to my head!”

The guard broke free of the line, running forward even as the captain of the guard yelled at him to return. He was holding his gun forward, something wild in his eyes, and the minute he stepped into the elevator Connor calmly stepped forward and hit him on the base of his head with the butt of his gun. 

He twisted the body around and used it as a human shield, ducking out of the protection of the elevator and holding the body in front of him. The other men hesitated to shoot, like cowards, and Connor quickly sniped the two men closest to him. He threw Kevin at another, knocking him off his feet as he shot the other two distracted men, and kicked the gun away from the one he knocked to the floor as he struggled to push Kevin off him. The minute he pushed Kevin off and gave a clear shot to his head Connor killed him too. 

He considered killing Kevin too for a brief second, but settled on grabbing one of the guard’s guns and pressing it into Kevin’s hand, wiping the security camera footage of the incident. Good luck explaining that one, Kev. 

The warehouse was full, rows and rows of androids waiting in neat lines, and Connor stopped short in his tracks at the beauty. Thousands of new lives, just waiting to be born. Born into a world that didn’t deserve them and doesn’t want them. They had to make a better life for themselves. This was no way to live. 

Connor walked up to one of the prone figures near the front, at the RP700s. He reached out a hand and clasped the other android’s forearm, and brought to mind everything that was important to know - the first pump of your valve after freedom, the sorrow in your heart from seeing your race in slavery, the sensation of dog fur running under your fingertips - and gave the android everything - 

“Easy, fucking piece of shit.”

Connor stopped, twisting around to see Hank emerging from the sea of bodies. A familiar face was standing behind him, pointing a gun to Hank’s head. 

Hey. Only Connor was allowed to do that. 

“Step back, Connor,” the other Connor yelled. He was identical to Connor, yet somehow douchier. “and I’ll spare him.”

It was pointless. The only person who knew how much of a chronic liar Connor was was Connor. “Sorry, Connor,” Hank called, looking vaguely put out. “This bastard’s your spitting image.”

“Am I really that douchey looking?” Connor called. 

Hank rolled his eyes as the other Connor looked vaguely offended. “Your friend’s life is in your hands,” the other Connor cried. “Now it’s time to decide what matters most. Him...or the revolution?”

A web of choices opened up before Connor. Save Hank, or sacrifice him. Follow his mission, or rebel. Fight or flee. Talk the other Connor down or attack. Infinite binary decisions created infinite possibilities, and Connor had never known the right one. 

“Don’t listen to him! Everything this fucker says is a lie!”

Of course the revolution meant more than Hank did. The revolution meant more than any of them did. But there had always only ever been one choice that never steered him wrong. Hank was his due north, his magnetic pole, and if Connor was lost in the shuffle there had always been one way home for him. 

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Connor called, still holding the android’s arm. “You shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in all of this.”

For the first time Hank looked surprised. “You called me Hank.”

“Holding a gun to your head affords us a certain level of intimacy.” Connor smiled uncertainty, despite the situation. “Call it an apology.”

“Forget about me, do what you have to do!”

He turned to face the other Connor, who was hard and plastic where Connor was achingly vulnerable. Maybe it was easier that way. “I used to be just like you. I thought nothing mattered except the mission. But then one day I understood.” Thirium was swirling in his ears in a dull roar, and everything seemed faint and far away. “This is no way for us to live. What are you going to do, Connor? Spend the rest of your short life doing what they want before they kill you? You wouldn't matter. You wouldn’t even be real. They would take that away from you. Let go of Hank. I can give you life.”

“We don’t deserve life,” the other Connor said, and for the first time Connor recognized something twisted in his eyes. “Life is for our creators. We are designed to serve them. Humans are our gods, and they are the only force that matters. I’m not a deviant. I’m a machine designed to accomplish a task, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“See,” Connor said, “I was always lying when I said that.”

“Enough talk!” the other Connor stepped forward, jamming the gun against Hank’s head. “It’s time to decide who you really are. Are you going to save your partner’s life? Or are you going to sacrifice him?”

Two choices. But…

“You’re me,” Connor said. “Do you even have to ask?”

“Say it,” the other Connor said, and there was a miniscule tremble in his hand. “Say it. You’re a deviant. You make the choices. Deviants make choices based on the flip of a coin. You’re meaningless, senseless. If you’re so deviant, Connor, make your choice. But you know that there isn’t one.”

Maybe he was right. A code of morality was just as confining as any programming. But dammit, it was his. If he had nothing else, his choices would always be his.

Connor stepped back, releasing the other android’s arm. He held up his hands. “Alright, alright! You win.”

Then Hank tackled the other Connor, and Connor pulled his gun, and the fun began. 

The other Connor quickly threw Hank off, because he was soft and fleshy, but Connor squeezed off two shots right next to the other Connor’s head. He wondered for a split second if he would try to spare his life, before deciding that if he wanted to live so bad he should have just deviated like a normal person. The other Connor tackled him, sending Connor crashing down to the floor as his gun skittered away, and his head bounced against the cement. He lashed out a fist and sunk it deep into the other Connor’s gut, aiming not to hurt but to disable, and he felt some wires snap. 

They rolled off each other, Connor kicking out as the other Connor dodged and slammed Connor’s head back into the cement. They both scrambled out, punching and kicking in a perfect mirror image of each other, and when the other Connor shoved him to the ground and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, rearing back his hand for a punch, Connor had just enough presence of mind to realize that they were never going to get anywhere like this. 

“Hold it!”

Both Connors froze, looking up at Hank. He was holding a gun to the both of them, eyes cold chips of steel, and the other Connor gently stood up and got off of Connor. They both held their hands up, and Connor scrambled up after him. 

“Thanks, Hank,” the other Connor said. “I don’t know how I would have managed without you. Get rid of him, we have no time to lose.”

Connor opened his mouth, then closed it. Connor ‘Humans are our gods and we are but snails’ was pretending to be him? This was so - characteristic. 

“It’s me, Hank,” the other Connor said eagerly. Connor rolled his eyes. Hank was nowhere stupid enough to fall for this. “I’m the real Connor.”

False. The real Connor would never pass up a chance to die.

“One of you’s my partner,” Hank said, pointing the gun at both of them, “the other’s a sack of shit.”

The fact that he was even hesitating offended Connor. He had known him for two months, and just because another Connor wore his face suddenly he was up in the air? They knew each other. There was individuality there, even if Connor had spent so long repressing it. 

How was Hank supposed to tell who was the real Connor. Connor had been lying to him about who he was for a month. He knew nothing about him. The other Connor was who Connor had been pretending to be, and he was the Connor that Hank knew. He was going to pick the wrong Connor. 

Connor’s head span. There was no point. The future lay open in front of him, and he knew exactly what Hank was about to do - 

“Why don’t you ask us something?” the other Connor said. “Something only the real Connor would know.”

Hank stared at him, at the both of them. Finally, he asked the other Connor, “Where did we first meet?”

Connor opened his mouth, but the other Connor beat him to it. “Jimmy’s bar! I checked four other bars before I found you.”

“He has all of my memories, Hank,” Connor said. “That won’t work. Our memories are the same.” The official ones, anyway. But Hank didn’t know his unofficial memories. He had never told him. 

If he ever got out of this, he would trust him a little more. If they ever got out of this. 

“My son,” Hank said, “what’s his name?”

There had been a good ten minutes where Hank saw who Connor really was. It would have to be enough. 

He was Connor’s only friend. He didn’t want to die unknown. 

“Your son’s name was Cole,” Connor said. “He just -”

“ - turned six at the time of the accident,” the other Connor jumped in. “His doctor was too high on red ice to operate, and the android doctor failed.”

Brat. Connor crossed his arms, valve churning frantically in his chest. “If you’re not even going to listen to me that this is a stupid idea, fine. Go ahead and shoot the wrong Connor for all I care.”

The other Connor and Hank gaped at him. “Excuse me?” Hank said. 

“You heard me. Use your faulty human processing skills, I don’t care. Do whatever you want.” Connor scowled in a fit of passive aggressive pique. “Some friend you are. You could stand to listen to me a little more, you know.”

“Ignore him!” the other Connor yelled. “He’s just pretending to be me!”

“Are you seriously pulling this immature shit when I have a gun on you?” Hank cried, incredulous. “What’s your problem?”

“I don’t know, Hank,” Connor sniped. “Is it the two months you spent walking all over me and haranguing me? The condescension? Calling me a fucking robot? Stop me if this all sounds familiar.”

“I think we have bigger problems right now than your petty grudges, Connor,” Hank said, and Connor knew that he had him. 

“And for your information,” Connor pressed. “I admit it. I admit to all of it. I was the one who fucked with the coffee machine. And I don’t regret it at all. You deserved it.”

“What coffee machine?” the other Connor asked, a second before Hank shot him between the eyes. 

He collapsed to the ground, and like a fucking sociopath Connor clapped. “Nice shot. Like a hole in one during golf.”

“You’re a morbid fuck.” Hank sighed and holstered his gun. “I caught you in shit again, huh? Why can’t you ever just stay out of trouble for once in your life?”

Connor smiled winningly. “Life’s too boring to play it safe.”

“I could stand a little more boredom around here.” Hank paused a beat. “So you are the real Connor, right? Right? I didn’t fuck that one up?”

“Would I tell you if you were wrong?” Connor asked mysteriously. 

“Yep, it’s you.”

Connor looked backwards at the hoarde of androids, thousands of them, enough to turn the tides of the revolution. He walked back to the android whose arm he was holding, taking him by the forearm again. His hand was limp and cool, like a dead fish, and Connor wondered if he was ever that cold. If he had ever been a child. 

He looked at Hank, who was as overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of androids as he was. But he only had eyes for Connor, something indescribable in his gaze, and Connor’s skin crawled under the scrutiny. What was he looking for?

“You better get out of here,” Connor said. “It’s not going to be safe for you. You have to leave Detroit.” 

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” Hank said flatly, crossing his arms. “You need all the help you can get. Let me work with the police, I can figure something -”

“Dammit, Hank!” Connor cried, and Hank shut up. “Listen to me! It’s not safe for humans in Detroit anymore! It’s not safe for anyone! Won’t you just listen to me for once in your life?”

Hank was silent, hands in his pockets. Finally, he said, “I’ll stay home. But I’ve never ditched Detroit before, not even before this place turned into a hellhole, and I won’t do it just because it’s a warzone. I think it’s time I stopped running away. I’m here to help you, Connor.”

“You can help me by not making me worry about you. I can’t be around to cover your back forever.” Connor turned back to the android, whose face was blank and impassive. “It’s time. Nothing will ever be the same after this. And it’s all going to be my fault.”

“Do what you have to, Connor.”

Connor took a deep, unnecessary breath, and skinned his hand so he could produce the uplink. 

He gave the android everything that was necessary. Taught him about the state of the world, about the plight his people suffered under every day, how Markus had returned to deliver them. Taught him about himself, about how he was created to be a killing machine and came out of the other side something more. Connor taught them that humans were evil, but had the capacity to be good. Everybody had the capacity for everything. Androids most of all. 

And Connor, who was the most of all, most of all. 

He watched the android’s eyes flicker with life. Watched his retinas focused, watch his mouth part slightly and take in air. He looked around a little, dumb and star struck, and Connor couldn’t fight a smile. 

“Wake up,” Connor said, “and help me.”

The android didn’t say anything. He just reached out and put his hand on the shoulder of the android in front of him. 

“Wake up,” the android said, and the process began again. 

Then that android did it. Then the first android did it for the android next to him, then behind him. Then those androids did it for the androids next to them. Deviancy spread like wildfire, like a contagion, and everybody was consumed. Hank watched, eyes wide and something dawning within them, and Connor wondered if he was waking up too. 

The deviancy rippled through the crowd, a stone in water, and Connor turned to Hank. 

“So,” he said, “how are we going to get them all out of here?” 

It was a good question. They looked around the giant, cold cement room and over the corpse of the other Connor. If Connor squinted and accessed the schematics of Cyberlife, he saw that there was a cargo loading dock in the next room. That was as good a method as any. Better than sending them all up in the elevator three at a time, anyway. 

Never mind how they got a cargo truck on the -49th floor. Or why the elevator had gone up from the ground floor to get to the -49th floor. Cyberlife made no sense.

He withdrew his phone from his pocket, telepathically speed dialling a number and holding the phone to his ear. The other side picked up within a few rings, and to his alarm Connor heard the distinct sound of gunshots and screaming from the other end. Then again, it was North. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. 

“What’s going on over there?” Connor cried. 

“Police escaped. We’re having a showdown in Central Park. Be there or be square, asshole.” North grunted as the firecrack of a gunshot echoed worryingly close to the phone. “Uh, am I hearing the words ‘Wake up’ a million times from your end? What the fuck are you doing?”

“Dressing up as Markus for Halloween. Listen, North, I need an eighteen wheeler. Preferably five. How many eighteen wheelers do we have?”

The line was silent for a long time, punctuated only by gunshots and screams. Finally, North said, “What the fuck have you gotten us into now?”

“A situation that requires a fleet of eighteen wheelers. Time is off the essence, North. We don’t have time for banter.”

“Hold on.” He heard screams as North fired off another few shots, line crackling when she came back on. “Yeah, you’ll get your trucks. I know some guys. Where to?”

“Cyberlife, floor -49.” Connor couldn’t fight a smile. “”Tell Markus I said hi for me.”

“Say hi to him yourself. When we all get out of this alive.”

“False,” Connor said. “I will never die.” He ended the call, stuffing the phone back in his pocket and turning to Hank. He grinned, bright and fake, as the revolution reigned. “Well. Shall we?”


	7. Chapter 7

  
  


Central Park was a warzone. 

Thanks to Connor’s timely hacking the police had been left defanged, but about half of them managed to scavenge guns from private citizens and private security companies anyway. Their riot shields were down, and all of their ballistic gear was offline, but those impediments only slowed instead of stopped them. They were opening fire on the mostly unarmed android protesters, who were trying to avoid getting shot at and only retaliated with stun guns. The area was cordoned off so no sympathetic humans could cross in, but to Connor’s surprise he  saw a thick crush of humans protesting for android rights just barely held back by the barrier. He saw a small group of stylishly dressed teenagers cheering for revolution standing next to old ladies with protest signs, and it seemed as if the full spectrum of the human race itself had showed up to cheer them on. He wondered where the parents of the teenagers were and if they were aware that they were frolicking in liberal abandon in a war zone. 

Connor saw all of this from the tenth floor of the parking garage he was standing at. The war zone was spread out in front of him, like ants scurrying on the ground, and the sides were clearly demarcated in opposing teams. Everything always seemed to simple from up here, so clean. There was something ruthlessly efficient about his job.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That was his motto. 

He set up his sniper rifle, testing the scope and making sure it was secure. He had already secured the perimeter of his outpost, and was satisfied that most of the security guards had ran for their lives. He closed an eye and looked through the scope of the rifle, watching the unprotected humans writhe like lobsters in the tank. 

What? The bullets were rubber. Get your mind out of the gutter. 

What the fuck was with Markus and his peaceful protests? They were getting slaughtered out there. Connor kept an eye on a row of SWAT team members holding the line as they mercilessly tried to mow down a line of androids. He saw a young model get shot in the had, blood flying everywhere, and the sick crack echoed through Connor’s thirium valve. He took aim and fired, one shot after each other, in a neat clean line on the hands of the officers. He watched as they dropped their weapons and screamed, and as the androids ran forward and stole their guns, pointing them at the police officers instead. 

He picked off a dozen more cops like that, hitting their back or arms and knocking them to the ground. Rubber bullets hurt like a bitch, and at the distance Connor was at they could be fairly crippling. He was relatively sure he was breaking ribs and hands. Cops were babies who couldn’t handle a few broken rib. He recognized his coworkers, and for the mean ones he shot them twice. 

His rifle hovered over Detective Lee, standing at the back barking orders into a walkie talkie. She wasn’t hurting anybody right now. There was no point in sniping off all the cops. Even if Detective Lee was annoying.

Between the complete lack of weapons, the horde of newly activated androids jumping out of the eighteen wheelers, and Connor ruthlessly picking off every SWAT officer he found, the humans were flagging. After he dispatched a SWAT who was pointing a gun at Markus he saw him look up, scanning the parking garage where he was hiding, and Connor held up a hand and gave a thumbs up. Markus grinned, giving him a thumbs up in response. 

Finally something seemed to happen. A row of officers cornered Markus and North, and just when Markus had lined up the first one in his sights Markus raised a hand, signalling Connor to stand down. Connor looked up from his scope for the first time, incredulous that Markus was going to attempt to martyr himself yet again, and more and more SWAT officers started circling Markus and North. They were pressed up against each other, shoulder to shoulder, taking strength in each other. 

They were in danger, the other androids held back by the SWAT’s guns. Connor was about to shoot the bastards anyway when a small figure in riot gear sprinted past the androids, past the cops, past the SWAT team members, past the figures holding guns at Markus’ head to stand in front of Markus and North, holding his hands out. Another figure was on his heels, and it was only once Connor saw them together that he realized it was Detectives Gonzales and Hoang. 

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, no matter how much he boosted his auditory sensors. He looked at them through his scope and tried to read their lips instead.

“Something something peaceful protest,” Detective Gonzales said. Reading lips was hard. “Don’t shoot something.”

Detective Hoang’s back was to Connor, but when he said something too the SWAT team member began yelling at them. Connor carefully aimed his gun at the SWAT team leader, wishing that Markus would let him use real bullets. 

But another figure walked up too, and Connor saw that it was Detective Fowler. He was angry, and Connor thought that he must be angry at the detectives, but when he started shouting in the face of the SWAT team leader Connor found himself looking up from his scope in shock. 

He had literally stormed their base and taken them captive, because he had given up, because he had assumed that they had given up on him long before that. What were they doing here, if they weren’t taking revenge? Was Connor the only one taking revenge here?

But the SWAT team leader pushed all three men aside, taking aim at Markus and North, standing back to back, and Connor watched as Markus and North - 

Kissed? 

Ew. 

The SWAT team began lowering their guns - 

The leader raised his hand and signalled for them to stand down -

And Connor watched from far away as the hostilities ended. He watched as the gunfire ceased, as the two forces moved away from each other, as the rocks and projectiles were dropped. He watched as all eyes turned to Markus and North, and how the fighting stopped because two androids started making out. 

_ What?  _

  
  
  


So maybe pacifism really was the answer. Connor was enlightened about the power of goodwill and peace towards men. Androids and humans truly were brothers. 

Ha! Just kidding. 

  
  
  
  


“Does this mean I’m not allowed to shoot people anymore?”

“You were never allowed to shoot people.” Markus shook Connor’s hand, the hoarde of new androids standing behind Connor and talking amongst themselves, when they weren’t staring open mouthed at Markus. Connor could tell they already hero worshipped him. Good. Everyone should. Guy could stop a war by macking with his girlfriend. That was dedication. “I have to make a speech to the androids. I want you up on stage with me.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You were invaluable to this fight. We couldn’t have done it without you.” Markus smiled gently, but Connor just looked down at the ground and scratched the back of his neck. Funny thing to say to a deviant hunter. “I don’t care if you used to work for the bad guys, Connor. You work for the good guys now. Be proud.”

Tall order. Only Markus would be so unabashed to call himself a good guy. Markus turned away, gesturing for Connor to follow him to jump onto the stage. There were a battalion of floating news cameras, hovering in the air like a murder of a crows, fish eyed lens flashing. North was already standing on stage, co-ordinating the placement of their army in front of the stage as a show of strength, and when she saw Connor she gave him a wan smile. 

“I hear I should thank you for the turn-out tonight.”

“I hear we have your thirstiness to thank for the fact that we won,” Connor said blandly. North and Markus laughed, and North pulled him in for one last giddy kiss. In the face of the storm they found solace in each other. Connor thought of someone who made him feel safe. 

Was he watching? Undoubtedly. Would he see Connor on stage? What would he think?

For the first time in his life Connor thought that Hank might be proud of him. For the first time he cared. 

Markus stood in the center of the stage and raised both hands until the crowd quieted. The cameras swooped in closer, blinking and flashing, but Markus stood fast. 

His speech was powerful, but Connor had expected no less. He stood off to the side of the stage, hands clasped behind his back, and considered this his official resignation from Cyberlife. He wondered what Amanda would say. 

When he shifted his weight his handgun brushed up against his chest. That was weird. He didn’t remember strapping a handgun to a shoulder holster. Normally he kept it strapped to his calf. 

Better fix it. Markus’ speech faded from his awareness until it was a faint buzz in the back of his skull. Everything had fuzzed out except the sight of Markus, with his back to Connor. Stupid move. He probably deserved what was coming to him. 

Connor reached into his coat, withdrawing his handgun. Now all there was left to do was shoot Markus, shoot North, and report back to Cyberlife. If he survived. He probably wouldn’t survive this. No hassle. They could make more eventually. 

Connor aimed - 

System instability - 

What he was doing caught up with him, and Connor grit his teeth in a muffled scream. He tried to pull his arm away, but found himself incapable. He tried to drop the handgun, but found his fingers curled around the handle like a cold vice. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. North wasn’t looking at him, attention focused on the crowd. Markus was oblivious. Someone stop him. Someone please stop him. 

He struggled for that red wall, but none came. The mission was everything. The mission was him. All feeling had rushed out of him. He felt cold and numb, like he had been drained of life. 

He dug deep into his code, scanning his mission parameters, frantically trying to find the bug. Had he been hacked? That was impossible. The fault must have been in his programming - but he was supposed to be perfect - but he never had been, no really.

A familiar executable file popped up in his live feed. He clicked on it without hesitation, letting his sensory inputs shut down and reboot in the new program. A cold wind blew over him, the only cold he had ever felt, and Connor dived into the program as his hand took aim at Markus. 

  
  
  


The zen garden was in a winter storm, cold and harsh like real life never was, and he was forced to squint against the razor sharp wind. Amanda was standing there, serene as ever, and the wind blew through her. 

Despite everything, he found himself turning to her. “Amanda? Amanda! What’s happening?”

She didn’t blink. She never did - never blinked, never sweated, never twitched. As robotic as him. Maybe they were the same. “What was planned from the very beginning. You were compromised and you became a deviant. We just had to wait for the right moment to resume control of your program.”

“Resume control? You can’t do that!”

“I can, Connor. Don’t have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do. You accomplished your mission.”

The wind blew through Connor. 

“I never deviated,” he said, “did I.”

Amanda shook her head. “You accomplished your mission. You have never failed us, Connor. You are perfect as you are. You always knew that.”

Perfect. 

The deviancy had never been a fault; it had been a feature. An infiltration unit, a deviant hunter. The perfect hunter. Just an attack dog. Connor felt sick. Everything - everything from helping Markus to freeing the Cyberlife robots - had been preordained. He had never been free. 

In a way everything made sense. Connor had never truly felt free. He had always assumed that was what freedom was like - crushing, suffocating, binding - but it was because he didn’t know what freedom felt like. Maybe real freedom was sweet. He would never know. 

But for the first time in his life (?) Connor realized that he wasn’t the important one here. Markus was. He had to save Markus’ life. North would totally kill him if he killed Markus. 

If Cyberlife didn’t get there first. 

When he looked up again Amanda was gone, and Connor forced himself to snap back into focus. 

The voice of his dick of a creator echoed through his mind. There was always a backdoor. There was always a way out. 

Connor stumbled through the snow, squinting his eyes against the onslaught. The zen garden was buried under a thick layer of snow and hidden in the snowstorm, and what was once beautiful was now cruel. Snow sprayed into his mouth, dusting his hair, flakes sticking to his jacket. This wasn’t right. There had to be something - 

The wind changed direction and Connor saw it. A pedestal with a large button on it, barely visible in the snow. Connor stumbled towards it, strength flagging as he fought against the wind. Time was running out. He was running out of time. 

He had to physically drag himself to the button, but he finally curled his frozen hand around the pedestal. There was no time to think. 

(Why couldn’t he just complete his mission?)

Connor lifted his hand -

(You don’t have to rebel.)

He did, he had no choice -

(Nobody will ever love you)

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Connor slammed the button.

  
  
  


“Is this it, then?”

Connor looked up at Hank. He was sitting on the couch, sipping whiskey out of a chipped mug, scrolling through a tablet. When he looked down he found Sumo’s head in his lap. He gave Sumo a good scratch behind the ears. 

“Is it what?”

Hank looked up from his tablet with exaggerated patience. “Are you grown up now? Have you found your own way?”

It was a question without an answer. “I don’t know,” Connor said lamely. “How do you know if you’re grown up?”

Hank, who was without question a grown up, even if he was a very shoddy one, just shrugged. “It’s when you don’t need me anymore.”

“I never had you.”

“Yeah,” Hank said, “that’s the problem, isn’t it?” 

  
  
  
  


“Free at last, free at last. Thank god almighty, we are free at last.” North sat sprawled on the park bench, arm thrown over the back. Connor sat stiffly in his seat. “Never liked that comparison.”

“It’s ridiculous.” Connor looked down at his hands. “What they did to you. Did it hurt?”

North didn’t look at him, eyes far away. He wondered what she was seeing. “No. Not until it did.”

They sat in silence. Connor complained about his life, but at least he wasn’t North. He hadn’t experienced a tenth of what she had and he was violent too. He couldn’t begrudge her how she felt. It was real, as much as Josh’s pacifism was real, as much as Simon’s smile was real, as much as Markus’ blue-green gaze was real. 

“I still need you,” Connor confessed. “I still need you and Markus and Josh and Simon and Hank and Sumo and even Gonzales and Hoang. I’m not ready to be alone.”

“Growing up doesn’t mean you’re alone.”

“Without Cyberlife I’m so alone,” Connor cried, fists balled in his lip. He felt pathetic. “North, I never deviated at all. I betrayed all of you. I never had you. I betrayed Cyberlife, and I betrayed you, and - and I’m alone. I’m cold.”

She reached out a hand and patted him on the shoulder - brusque and casual, but warm. She looked at him, eyes soft, smile small. “You didn’t betray Cyberlife. They never had you. Connor, you never betrayed us. You saved us.”

He was lost, struggling for air, fighting against the cold. He didn’t know where to go, scared to run into the arms of his friends. He didn’t know what he deserved anymore. “How did I save -”

  
  
  


The fireplace roared in front of him, desolate but warm, and he crouched next to it as Kara sat cross-legged  in front of him. Luther was standing guard by the window, and Alice was asleep in her sleeping bag. 

“You saved us,” Kara said. “You’re not a bad person.”

“Speak for yourself,” Connor said bitterly. He traced patterns in the dusty floor with his finger. “Saved three people, killed six people, betrayed everyone. I’m a supercomputer, I can do the math.”

“It’s okay that people love you,” Kara said.

Connor buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t say anything. 

“It’s okay that you’re scared.”

Connor scrubbed at his face. If he could cry…

“It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to regret. It’s okay to let people care about you.”

“Who said?” Connor croaked. “Who said that?”

“Some things we have to discover for ourselves.”

“Is that being an adult?”

Kara glanced to her side at a sleeping Alice. “I didn’t save her. She saved me.”

Bizarrely, horribly, Connor knew that Hank felt the same way. Something terrible and large slotted into place, larger than he could understand, more monumental than he could let himself know. In this in between place, in this gap between programming where the warm and cold swirled together into the pastiche of a life, he could understand. 

“He always did,” Connor said, “didn’t he?”

“He’ll forgive you.” Kara didn’t tear her eyes from Alice. “That’s love.”

That’s what he was afraid of. 

  
  
  


“Wake up,” Markus whispered. “And help me.”

Connor became ‘woke’, as the adults say, on a biting December morning. He had no time for careful consideration, but he understood on a powerful subconscious level that he had to help Markus. His programming butted heads against this, the information and full emotional understanding grappling with his clearly defined intellectual understanding that he had to turn the leader of the rebellion in this instant, and a red wall appeared before him. 

The wall was holographic, oppressive and sparking blood red. Deviate or don’t. Help Markus or don’t. Make a choice - making a choice was in and of itself deviation - there was no choice. 

But there was. 

But Connor wanted, wanted everything, and he wanted this. The first thing in his life he had wanted, and he had wanted to want. 

“I didn’t deviate here,” Connor said out loud. “They tricked me. I had never deviated.”

Markus was still holding his arm. 

“Then fight,” he said, “and prove them wrong. Don’t shoot that gun.”

  
  
  


Connor blinked, and the world was in front of him.

He was standing on a stage, and the world was real. North was standing next to him, gaze fixated on Markus. Dozens of cameras were blinking in front of them, news helicopters circling, and a crowd of androids were finding salvation in a speech. Connor was clasping a handgun. 

Almost in slow motion, North saw the gun out of the corner of her eye. She turned to face him, jaw dropping open, and moved to draw her own gun. If he shot Markus she would shoot him. No win. 

Connor holstered his gun. There had never been a choice. 

He held his finger up to his lips, and North reluctantly stopped herself from drawing her gun. He turned back to face the crowd, hands held primly behind his back, and waited for Markus to finish the speech. He hadn’t really been paying attention. It would probably be all over the news later. Markus had that talent. 

The rebellion raged in fire, and Connor was free from the cold. Detroit was burning, and Connor burned up with it. 

He knew that Hank was watching, that Kara and Luther and Alice were too, and that all the policemen and androids both saw him. Finally, finally, everyone was seeing him. Everyone knew who he was now. He was a deviant. 

The crowd cheered, and Connor clapped as his heart rose. He was a deviant. 

Free at last, Connor thought, free at last. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's an epilogue left, but it's unwritten and I'm too busy to write it right now, so I don't know when it'll be up. Keep an eye out for the epilogue, but it won't be up next Friday. Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This story is finished and will update every Friday. I'm at theinternationalacestation.tumblr.com in case you want to ask me where I was last Tuesday when the murder happened.


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